Arturo’s Island: A Novel

Elsa Morante’s novels were once considered the greatest of Italy’s postwar generation. Here, Ann Goldstein’s deft translation (Madeline Schwartz, New York Review of Books) of Arturo’s Island heralds a second life for the beloved author, finally garnering Morante the new readers she deserves (Lily Tuck, Wall Street Journal). Imbued with a spectral grace, the novel follows the adolescent Arturo through his days on the isolated Neapolitan island of Procida, where-his mother long deceased, his father often absent, and a dog as his sole companion-he roams the countryside or reads in his family’s lonely, dilapidated mansion. This quiet, meandering boyhood existence is existentially upended when his father brings home a beautiful sixteen- year- old bride, Nunziatella. A novel of thwarted desires, written with the power of malediction (Dwight Garner, New York Times), Arturo’s Island reemerges to take its rightful place in the world literary canon.