Moncalvos

Enrico Castelnuovo’s The Moncalvoswas originally published in 1904 in Italian. This is the first English translation of this famous novelist’s most controversial title. Set at the turn of the 20th century, 50 years after Garibaldi’s revolution and the unification of Italy, the Jewish residents of Italy have come into their own as landowners, academics, business people, and financiers. But one branch of the Moncalvos family yearns for the level of respectability that only an aristocratic title can confer. This requires much political maneuvering, but it also requires conversion to Catholicism. Two brothers, a mathematician and a banker, and their children, take very different routes through this maze.