The Document Within the Walls The Romance of Bassani

Giorgio Bassani is an Italian-Jewish writer from Ferrara, famous largely for 'The Garden of the Finzi-Contini', 'The Golden-Rimmed Eye Glasses' and other novels, brought together in 'Il Romanzo di Ferrara' (1980). In this monumental work, Bassani describes the life of the Italian Jews under Fascism. Bassani may be seen as not just a fictional writer, but as a witness of persecution of Jews under Fascism; his 'Romance' is not so much a novel but a multifaceted document on Jewish life in the peninsular. This volume takes into account a close reading of Bassani, literary theories on witnessing the Shoa, and the historical debate on Italian discriminatory politics. The book is thus both literary criticism and an analysis of anti- Semitism and Jewish assimilation in Italy.