Grazia Deledda

Canne al vento

Martha King

The rugged landscape of Baronia on Sardinia sets the scene for this novel of crime, guilt and retribution. This novel presents the story of the Pintor sisters - from a family of noble landowners now in decline - their nephew Giacinto, and their servant Efix, who is trying to make up for a mysterious sin committed many years before. Around, below, and inside them the raging Mediterranean storms, the jagged mountains, the murmuring forests, and the gushing springs form a Greek chorus of witness to the tragic drama of this unforgiving land. Deledda tells her story with her characteristic love of the natural landscape and fascination with the folk culture of the island, with details about the famous religious festivals held in mountain encampments and the lore of the "dark beings who populate the Sardinian night, the fairies who live in rocks and caves, and the sprites with seven red caps who bother sleep." Introduction by the Sardinian ethnographer, Dolores Turchi.

Reeds in the Wind

LA Madre

Winner of the 1926 Nobel Prize in Literature In this tragic novel set in the author's native Sardinia, Constantino Ledda has been convicted and sentenced for the murder of his cruel uncle. Though innocent of the crime, he accepts the verdict as punishment for marrying Giovanna Era through a civil ceremony rather than an expensive church wedding. When Constantino is taken away, Giovanna has no way to provide for herself or family, and out of desperation divorces her husband and marries a wealthy but brutish landowner. When the real killer confesses and Constantino is released, he and Giovanna begin a forbidden and ultimately destructive affair.

After the Divorce

"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.

Cosima

الأم

Kemal Atakay

Sardinya efsaneleri

Il vecchio della montagna

Üç Erkek Kardeş

O ambiente duro e inóspito das serras da Sardenha no início do séc. XX, onde uma sociedade arcaica está fatalmente dividida entre senhores, servos e bandidos, compõe o pano de fundo em que se desenrola uma história de paixão e contraste entre duas personagens. A latifundiária Marianna Sirca e o jovem bandido Simone Sole tentam ultrapassar a incomunicabilidade entre os papéis que lhes são impostos pelo destino. Ao rejeitar as leis e os costumes imutáveis da sua própria terra, Marianna - uma mulher à frente do seu tempo -, está disposta a tudo para se unir a Simone. Em troca, exige ao amado o único bem que ele possui: a liberdade. Esta obra confirma a visão romanticamente pessimista da grande escritora italiana Grazia Deledda, segundo a qual dificilmente conseguimos escapar da infelicidade e do destino, forçados que somos a aceitar a prisão da nossa própria condição. Do prefácio de Grazia Maria Saviotti: «Sentimentos rudimentares e fatalismo, paixões brutais, conceito místico-supersticioso da Divindade, contrastes de natureza religiosa originados por crises de consciência, sentido do mágico e do fabuloso, adesão física e espiritual às leis primitivas da natureza mais selvagem, estilo rude em harmonia com o ambiente e as personagens, eis as notas características que revelam em Grazia Deledda uma grande e genuína força criadora.»

Marianna Sirca

كوزيما

Roman. Überarbeitete Neuausgabe, kommentiert von Jochen Reichel

Schilf im Wind

Aos quinze anos, Oli Derios, uma rapariga da província, é seduzida por Anania, camponês fantasioso e ingénuo. Grávida, abandonada pelo sedutor e expulsa da casa paterna, inicia uma vida nómada e solitária, acompanhada pelo filho a quem baptizou com o nome do pai. Sem qualquer meio de sustento para si e para a criança, Oli acaba por a deixar à porta da casa do progenitor e partir sem olhar para trás. Criado pelo pai e pela madrasta, começa então a história do pequeno Anania que, sem nunca esquecer o traumático abandono que sofrera, procura escapar à condição de bastardo enjeitado que lhe reservara o destino: enquanto se dedica ao estudo do Direito, nunca desistirá de encontrar a mãe. Mas saberá Anania o que realmente o espera nesse encontro? Um desfecho surpreendente tornará esta história uma parte de nós.

Cizas

A Sinistra

Cenere. I giuochi della vita

Jan Kozma's translation of Marianna Sirca is the near-literal rendering of a novel written by Grazia Deledda (1871-1936), the celebrated Italian author from Sardinia who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1926. Almost all of Deledda's stories treat the lives, loves, tragedies, and triumphs of the author's native land - the remote, isolated, and often forbidding island of Sardinia. This new translation includes an introduction that highlights the salient episodes of Grazia Deledda's life and which situates Marianna Sirca both literarily within the author's opera omnia and as part of the general literary trends of the early European twentieth century. Jan Kozma presents the homonymous protagonist, Marianna Sirca, as one of the great literary precursors of the liberated, independent, modern woman - an ironic twist, given the repressive culture in which Marianna lives. The translator also provides numerous explanatory foot-notes that elucidate particular arcane aspects of Sardinian life in the late nineteenth century. Marianna Sirca is a 30-year-old woman of inherited wealth who lives in Nuoro, Sardinia. Because of her strong will and sense of independence, Marianna is the family "black sheep" - refusing to be married off to a distant relative in a social arrangement of convenience. Instead Marianna becomes involved with Simone Sole, a younger man who was a servant in the Sirca household in his youth and who is now an outlaw - wanted for banditry. Against the will of her entire family, the lovers plan to marry, but at Marianna's insistence only after Simone "gets right with the law." The novel traces the story of these two emarginated lovers through various twists and turns, ending with a typical Deleddan flourish that leaves the reader with a real awareness of Sardinian, social mores, values, attitudes, and tradition.

"A novel of love and redemption by the Nobel-laureate Grazia Deledda. Set in the mountains of the Italian island of Sardinia, Deledda chronicles the decline of a once-prominent family. An adopted daughter tries to save them by murdering a wealthy relative only adding to their woes"--

Pino Boero

Bruno Rombi

Set in Sardinia in the 1900s. Story of the three Pintor sisters, their servant, Efix, and their nephew, Giacinto.

Grazia Deledda

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