About this item
Highlights
- The stunning English translation of the International Man Booker Prize Finalist novel hailed as "a story of grace and endurance, not mere survival" (The New York Times Book Review).
- About the Author: One of Italy's foremost women writers, Dacia Maraini was a finalist for the International Man Booker prize, the winner of the international Prix Formentor and the Premio Campiello, one of Italy's highest literary honors.
- 264 Pages
- Fiction + Literature Genres, Historical
- Series Name: FP Classics
Description
About the Book
An international bestseller from Italy's foremost woman writer.Book Synopsis
The stunning English translation of the International Man Booker Prize Finalist novel hailed as "a story of grace and endurance, not mere survival" (The New York Times Book Review).
Winner of the Premio Campiello, short-listed for the Independent Foreign Fiction Award, and published to critical acclaim in fourteen languages, this "spellbinding" historical novel by one of Italy's premier authors is now available in this luminous new translation (Booklist).
In early 18th century Sicily, noblewoman Marianna Ucrìa is trapped in a world of silence after a terrible childhood trauma left her deaf and mute. Married off to a lecherous uncle, she struggles to educate and elevate herself against all convention--and find her true place in a world that sees her as little more than property.
In language that conveys the keen vision and deep human insight possessed by her protagonist, Dacia Maraini captures the splendor and the corruption of Marianna's world, as well as the strength of her unbreakable spirit, in "one of those rare, rich, deep, strange novels that create a world so fantastic and so real you want to start reading it again as soon as you come to the last page" (Newsday).
Review Quotes
"The publication in America of Maraini's The Silent Duchess... is cause for rejoicing. Episodic and essentially plotless, but propelled by an inner tension, this unusual historical novel about the splendid but squalid Sicilian aristocracy of the early 18th century comes closer to belles lettres than a conventional novel." --Publishers Weekly "[D]eftly juggles a strong feminist statement with a beautifully specific re-creation of 18th-century Sicily. . . . [A] carefully paced story of intellectual and moral growth story that's as much a charming fairy tale as an impeccably realistic chronicle of one woman's painstaking ascension to self-expression and independence." --Kirkus "Maraini brilliantly conveys the mixture of luxury and squalor in which the Sicilian aristocracy lived. . . . The Silent Duchess manages totally to overpower the reader with its narrative urgency. . . . Since she won the Prix Formentor in 1963, Dacia Maraini has produced nothing finer than this." --Evening Standard (London) "This is a novel of the greatest vividness. It arouses intense feeling. It provokes thought. It invites the reader into a world which is very different from that in which we live, and yet immediately recognizable as true and valid. . . . It is illuminating, moving, and entrancing." --The Scotsman (Edinburgh) "The Silent Duchess has a subtlety of perception, a delicacy in probing emotions and above all, an elusive feel for history itself. . . . The narrative has the richness of a saga. . . . This history of a woman's quest for dignity is an astonishing achievement." --The Independent (London) "Dacia Maraini has produced a fiction of elegance and charm." --The Mail on Sunday (London) "A thoughtful and beautifully written book." --Sunday Express (London)
About the Author
One of Italy's foremost women writers, Dacia Maraini was a finalist for the International Man Booker prize, the winner of the international Prix Formentor and the Premio Campiello, one of Italy's highest literary honors. She is the author of more than fifty books, including novels, plays, collections of poetry, and critical essays.