New Reviews

We’ve recently had reviews of two of our titles that we’ve found especially interesting.

The first is Lorenzo Miletti’s review in Latomus of Rabun Taylor’s Ancient Naples: A Documentary History. Origins to c. 350 CE. He has high praise for the most recently published volume in our Documentary History of Naples series. Miletti lauds Taylor’s research and the scope of his coverage, his command of the written sources and of the most recent archaeological findings, and his ability to synthesize and interpret these for a broad audience of both specialists and more general readers. The review notes the volume’s up-to-date appeal for both an Anglophone and a wider Italian and international audience. Miletti concludes his review with some suggestions for a larger format, color-illustrated edition. Stay tuned.…

The second is Norman Jope’s piece in the latest Tears in the Fence on Ana Ilievska’s and Pietro Russo’s Contemporary Sicilian Poetry: A Multilingual Anthology. Jope has many very good things to say about the volume, its selection of authors and poems, and Ana Ilievska’s translations. He also raises the question of whether such a collection should reflect the universal themes raised by this wide array of authors — and foregrounded by the editors — or focus more closely on specific times, places, and contexts. These are interesting reflections, from a decidedly Anglophone perspective. 

Please have a look at both reviews.

View a YouTube Video on The Priest’s Hat

View a YouTube video by translator Steve Eaton on Verbal Exchange, “The Priest’s Hat: The Story Behind Italy's First Crime Novel,”  

Steve discusses the novel and author, the actual historical event on which De Marchi based this novel, and the sensational reaction of Italian society to this murder. Please have a look at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6pXAXDS-LxU

New Reviews of Pascoli’s Convivial Poems

Elena Borelli & James Ackhurst’s new translation of Giovanni Pascoli’s Convivial Poems has gotten quite a lot of good critical attention this season, with reviews in Reading in Translation, London Grip, Gradiva, and Annali d’Italianistica.

Please have a look at: http://www.italicapress.com/index556.html

 

De Marchi’s The Priest's Hat Published

 

We’re please try announce the publication of The Priest’s Hat by Emilio De Marchi, translated by Steve Eaton & Cinzia Russi. This is the newest title in our Italian Crime Writers Series. 

This suspenseful, moving, and darkly ironic tale loosely based on Count Alessandro Faella’s murder of the priest Virgilio Costa in Imola in 1881. Against the background of late nineteenth-century Naples, the novel brings us the meltdown of an aging playboy, Carlo Coriolano, the last baron of a once-wealthy and powerful clan. 

U barone has squandered his inheritance and now can’t support his extravagant tastes. He’s been banned from his club and depends on his loyal, long-suffering housekeeper for pocket change. And if he doesn’t repay an old loan, he’ll soon be in jail. His solution is to lure to his crumbling, mortgaged ancestral estate a greedy old priest, murder him, and then take possession of the priest’s considerable riches. Of course, it all goes wrong, and the priest’s hat takes us through a mirrored maze of guilt and self-deception as the baron attempts to maintain his equanimity and social position.

A precursor of the Italian giallo genre, The Priest’s Hat was first published in 1887 in installments. Echoing the works of Dostoyevsky and Dickens, De Marchi intended this novel as an accessible yet literate exposé of contemporary Italian society with its culture of gossip, rumor, and superstition; of powerful gangs and clergy; of misleading new philosophies; a frivolous, inept, and corrupt media; and an inequitable justice system.

Luis Gómez’s Floods of the Tiber now in English

The Tiber River winds through the center of Rome. In the 16th century, the river was fundamental to the city’s life, providing water supply for drinking, washing, and industrial uses, as well as local fishing. Its rapid current powered Rome’s grain mills, which ground the flour that was the basis of its food supply. The Tiber was also the depository for tons of sewage and other refuse that the city generated daily. Yet, just as the river supported Rome’s life, it also threatened it. 

Since antiquity, the Tiber had flooded periodically, often with devastating consequences. With the city’s growing population clustered in the low-lying flood plain near the riverbanks and the increasing severity of events due to climate change, the Tiber flood of October 8, 1530 was catastrophic. It was also a bitter sequel to the traumatic Sack of Rome of May 1527.

Luis Gómez’s The Floods of the Tiber of 1531 was motivated and informed by his own experience of this disaster. It bears eloquent witness to how he used his humanist methods and scholarship to cope with personal and community crisis. Gómez provides an eyewitness account of this major environmental disaster and an example of how contemporaries analyzed the causes and consequences of such events. 

This translation by Chiara Bariviera, Pamela O. Long, and William L. North is a collective effort of different expertises ranging from Roman archaeology and topography to late ancient, medieval, and early modern history of science, technology, urbanism, and culture. 

The editors have produced a clear, accurate, and readable English version of the original 1531 Latin edition — here also transcribed in full for the first time — accompanied by an informative introduction, expert annotations, and comprehensive bibliography.

176 pages, 17 illustrations, introduction,
notes, bibliography, index.