Alla cieca

Die rote Fahne und das goldene Vlies, Symbole des Aufbruchs, enden als zerrissene, blutige Fetzen im Dreck der Geschichte. Ist die Hoffnung auf Frieden und ein besseres Leben nur ein frommer Wunsch? Ein Traum, der unweigerlich mit Verrat und Brudermord endet, oder in den Todeslagern von Port Arthur, Leggi tutto

Magris, da anni, viene considerato il più credibile candidato italiano al Nobel. E il premio Nobel è premio che stimo e rispetto. Come stimo e rispetto il Magris di Danubio. Qui siamo da altre parti. In questa storia scritta dalla parte di un vinto, e con l'ambizione di raccontare tutti i rivoluziona Leggi tutto

When a novelist is a historian and a historian is a novelis, the process of writing a novel about a historical event is in most cases too challenging for the writer to accomplish the feat with the heightened inspiration that makes for a great novel. Magris overcame this problem by not writing the st Leggi tutto

Salvatore Cippico tells his life of Italian-Australian partisan from the early 20th century to the 90s. His ideas ground by History and his body crushed by the torturers, he ends up old and insane in a psychiatric hospital. One lost battle after the other, he tells his doctor how he was sent to Dach Leggi tutto

Marvellous writing — each chapter can be read as a prose poem in a long cycle rather than as a chapter in a novel — but what was the book's point? I found myself asking the question after the first 10 or so pages and was still asking it at the end. Magris apparently wanted to write about a post-WWII Leggi tutto

De ik-figuur, een psychiatrische patient, vertelt zijn belevenissen als een soort stream of consciousness aan zijn psychiater. Hij is kennelijk een Australische-Italiaanse communist, die in de nodige oorlogen en schermutselingen heeft gevochten. Alles loopt door elkaar. Tussendoor vertelt hij ook no Leggi tutto

Non mi è piaciuto. Troppi cambi repentini di date, luoghi e non si capisce bene chi sia il protagonista. Ogni volta è un personaggio diverso. Nella seconda parte del romanzo forse si capisce meglio il senso della trama. Al protagonista gli vengono forniti romanzi, biografie e quant'altro ed ogni fol Leggi tutto

An old man, apparently in a psychiatric clinic, tells about his life - he was a member of the Italian communist party, fought in the Spanish civil war, got arrested at Dachau, then in a camp in Yugoslavia, etc. At the same time, he also tells about his previous life, in the XIX century, as a sailor, Leggi tutto

This is an unusual novel that has a poetic intensity. There is an unnamed first-person narrator ostensibly telling the story of his life to a 'Doctor', but he recounts experiences(usually of suffering)that range from 18th-century deportation to Australia to Dachau and a postWW2 prison in the former

That's one of the best reflections I have ever read on human condition/nature and disappointment -and love, and loss-. Moreover it is marvelously written through parallel narratives in different historical contexts with something in common (if you want, a kind of 'Intolerance' structure but with muc Leggi tutto