The nameless narrator this, Pavese's last and greatest novel, returns to Italy from California after the Second World War. He has done well in America, but success hasn't taken the edge off his memories of childhood, when he was an orphan living at the mercy of a bitterly poor farmer. He wants to learn what happened in his native village over the long, terrible years of Fascism; perhaps, he even thinks, he will settle down. And yet as he uncovers a secret and savage history from the war-a tale of betrayal and reprisal, sex and death-he finds that the past still haunts the present.

THE MOON AND THE BONFIRE

Literature & Fiction

CESARE PAVESE

Contemporary

Sceptre

The nameless narrator this, Pavese's last and greatest novel, returns to Italy from California after the Second World War. He has done well in America, but success hasn't taken the edge off his memories of childhood, when he was an orphan living at the mercy of a bitterly poor farmer. He wants to learn what happened in his native village over the long, terrible years of Fascism; perhaps, he even thinks, he will settle down. And yet as he uncovers a secret and savage history from the war-a tale of betrayal and reprisal, sex and death-he finds that the past still haunts the present.

The moon and the bonfire

Peter Owen Ltd

Language Notes\nText: English (translation) 
Original Language: Italian\nFrom Publishers Weekly\nThe mythological dimension that informs such writings of Italian neo-realist Pavese (1908-1950) as his novel The Moon and the Bonfires is given full range in these exquisite retellings of Greek legends. Each piece is staged as a dialogue between two classical figures, a presentation which emphasizes that myth is a forum for existential drama--free will vs. destiny, e.g.--and a tool to confront the tragic. Of the players here, only Oedipus, glimpsed when he is ignorant of his identity, dares to say, "For me in my life, there is nothing ambiguous or wasted." Wiser speakers, like Prometheus, know that "man is pity and terror. Nothing else." Although Pavese presumes the reader's fluency in the works of Homer, Hesiod and the Greek tragedians, those unfamiliar with the classics will nonetheless profit from his lucidity and be persuaded when a satyr here argues that the "future lives of mortals will be modeled upon the imaginative shape they give to their terror." This lissome translation was first published in 1965. 
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Dialogues With Leuco (Eridanos Library, No. 17)

Marsilio Pub

The Burning Brand: Diaries 1935-1950

Walker

Cesare Pavese was one of Italy’s great post-war writers. His poetry was revolutionary—both artistically and politically—rejecting the verbal and philosophical constraints of tradition and utilizing direct, colloquial language. His subjects were peasants, hobos, and prostitutes, and this bilingual volume includes all the poetry Pavese ever published, including work originally deleted by Fascist censors. A landmark volume.
Cesare Pavese (1908-50) was a novelist, poet, and translator and a major literary figure in post-war Italy. He brought American influence to Italian literature through his translations. Pavese’s flight from the Fascists and subsequent confinement were reflected in his writings, which dealt with social struggle and revealed his sympathy for the oppressed. He committed suicide at the height of his literary powers.
A Kage-an Series Book

Disaffections: Complete Poems 1930-1950 (English and Italian Edition)

Poetry

Copper Canyon Press

Ristampa dell'edizione del 1950. Copertina flessibile. Cesare Pavese scrive La luna e i falò tra il 18 settembre e il 9 novembre del 1949. La luna e i falò e' il più importante romanzo di Cesare Pavese ed una delle ultime opere dello scrittore, che morirà suicida nell'agosto del 1950. Il protagonista del romanzo è Anguilla, un uomo che decide di tornare nel suo paese natale sulle colline piemontesi dopo aver vissuto per molti anni in America e aver fatto fortuna lì. La storia, raccontata in prima persona, non concerne solo il protagonista, di cui viene detto solo il soprannome Anguilla, ma tanti altri personaggi che entrano in relazione con lui, in un paese della valle del Belbo che non viene mai nominato. Il romanzo è un misto tra passato e presente e proprio per questo non è narrato nei minimi dettagli, ma vengono raccontati eventi che non sono (apparentemente) collegati tra loro, se non dai pensieri e dalle riflessioni del protagonista. L'evocazione dei ricordi è vissuta insieme e attraverso il vecchio amico falegname Nuto, che era stato per Anguilla una figura paterna e che è sempre rimasto nel paese, vivendo i cambiamenti determinati dalla guerra partigiana. La luna e i falò riassume tutte le tematiche più care a Pavese: mito, paesaggio rurale, ricerca delle origini e distruzione portata dalla Guerra. "The nameless narrator of The Moon and the Bonfires, Cesare Pavese's last and greatest novel, returns to Italy from California after the Second World War. He has done well in America, but success hasn't taken the edge off his memories of childhood, when he was an orphan living at the mercy of a bitterly poor farmer. He wants to learn what happened in his native village over the long, terrible years of Fascism; perhaps, he even thinks, he will settle down. And yet as he uncovers a secret and savage history from the war - a tale of betrayal and reprisal, sex and death - he finds that the past still haunts the present." "The Moon and the Bonfires is a novel of intense lyricism and tragic import, a masterpiece of twentieth-century literature that has been unavailable to American readers for close to fifty years. Here it appears in a vigorous new English version by R.W. Flint, whose earlier translations of Pavese's fiction were acclaimed by Leslie Fiedler as "absolutely lucid and completely incantatory.""--Jacket.

La Luna e i Falo' (Italian Edition)

Classics

Casa Editrice Vesuvius

2021 Reprint of the 1961 Edition. Full facsimile of the original edition and not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. For Cesare Pavese introspection was the only way of life. It led not to escape through fantasy but to an intensification and "purification" of experience through an anguished search for the truth about himself and the world in which he lived. Pavese, who took his life in 1950, is often considered as the most elusively complex Italian writer of his generation, which counts such noted authors as Ignazio Silone, Alberto Moravia and Elio Vittorini. Pavese's suicide at the age of 42, a few weeks after he had received the Strega Prize, Italy's highest literary award, shocked the literary world. These are his diaries, published after his death, which reveal much of the emotional/intellectual life that drove his life and art.

Biographies & Memoirs

Arts & Literature

Martino Fine Books

Il Compagno

Einaudi

Le poesie (Poesia) (Italian Edition)

Tra donne sole (Einaudi tascabili) (Italian Edition)

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