Cosima - Softcover

Grazia Deledda

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0934977062 ISBN 13: 9780934977067

Publisher: Italica Press, 2008

Synopsis

Short description: "Cosima" tells the story of an aspiring writer growing up in Nuoro, Sardinia during the last decades of the nineteenth century when formal education for women was rare and literary careers unheard-of. Based on Deledda’s own life, the work describes a young woman’s struggle against the dismay and disapproval of her family and friends at her creative ambitions. Yet it also reads like a charming fable with details of family life, rural traditions and wild bandits, and it is as much a novel of memory as of character or action. Deledda’s characters are poor country folk driven by some predetermined force. Their loves are tragic, their lives as hard and as rigidly controlled as nature itself in the hills of Sardinia. Deledda creates memorable figures who play out their lives against this backdrop of mountains and bare plains, sheepfolds and vineyards. Shimmering in the distance is the sea and escape — for a few — to the Continent or America. In 1926 Grazia Deledda became the second woman and the second Italian to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature. She wrote thirty-three novels, including "Reeds in the Wind," and many books of short stories, almost all set on Sardinia. Her work has become well known to English-speaking readers through Martha King’s translations for Italica Press.

About this title

From the Publisher:

Cosima reads like a charming fable with details of family life, folk tales and wild bandits; and it is full of vivid images of this Mediterranean landscape and its people.

From the Author:

To judge by the number of her books still in print in Italy, Grazia Deledda's novels have retained their appeal and value. Perhaps one reason is that they are about a world and people that no longer exist. But also Deledda's works, despite their now exotic location and distance in time, do not seem dated. Her emphasis on character and the eternal conflicts of love, hate, and jealousy transcends time and place. (from Introduction by Martha King)

About this edition

• Publisher: Italica Press
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0934977062
• ISBN 13: 9780934977067
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 156