Four generations of a farming family in Piemonto, Italy, survive birth and death, triumph and tragedy, poverty and prosperity, war and peace, in a saga that spans one hundred years of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century history

The Dust Roads of Monferrato

Literature & Fiction

Loy, Rosetta

World Literature

KNOPF

An internationally acclaimed novelist and journalist movingly chronicles her childhood in Rome during World War II, providing a rare account by a Catholic of Jewish persecution and Papal responsibility In 1937, Rosetta Loy was a privileged five-year-old growing up in the heart of the well-to-do Catholic intelligentsia of Rome. But her childhood world of velvet and lace, airy apartments, indulgent nannies, and summers in the mountains was also the world of Mussolini's fascist regime and the increasing oppression of Italian Jews. Loy interweaves the two Italys of her early years, shifting with powerful effect from a lyrical evocation of the many comforts of her class to the accumulation of laws stipulating where Jews were forbidden to travel and what they were not allowed to buy, eat, wear, and read. She reveals the willful ignorance of her own family as one by one their neighbors disappeared, and indicts journalists and intellectuals for their blindness and passivity. And with hard-won clarity, she presents a dispassionate record of the role of the Vatican and the Catholic leadership in the devastation of Italy's Jews. Written in crystalline prose, First Words offers an uncommon perspective on the Holocaust. In the process, Loy reveals one writer's struggle to reconcile her memories of a happy childhood with her adult knowledge that, hidden from her young eyes, one of the world's most horrifying tragedies was unfolding.

First Words: A Childhood in Fascist Italy

Biographies & Memoirs

Historical

Metropolitan Books

In 1937, Rosetta Loy was a privileged five-year-old growing up among the well-to-do Catholic intelligentsia of Rome. But her childhood world of indulgent nannies and summers in the mountains was also the world of Mussolini's fascist regime and the increasing oppression of Italian Jews. Loy interweaves the two Italys of her early years, revealing the willful ignorance of her own family as one by one their Jewish neighbors disappeared. She indicts journalists and intellectuals for their blindness and passivity, and presents a searing and dispassionate record of the role of the Vatican and Catholic leadership in the devastation of Italian Jewry. Written in crystalline prose, First Words offers an uncommon perspective on the Holocaust -- that of one writer as she struggles to reconcile her memories of a happy childhood with her adult knowledge of one of the world's most horrifying tragedies.

Conti, Gregory

Holt Paperbacks

A contemporary Italian classic reminiscent of The Garden of the Finzi-Continis. A Garcia Lorca poem gives this book its title, "not even the smallest hand can open the water door," and this epigraph begins a story of unrequited love. A five-year-old girl, the daughter of a bourgeois Roman family in the late 1930s, finds the object of her desire in her German-speaking governess: blond, blue-eyed, milky-white Anne Marie. The story of their relationship spans a single season, as the family moves through its obligatory social rituals. Their customs and manners are all absorbed through the wide-eyed gaze of their little girl making her first contact with the outside world. She encounters kindergarten, the nuns and their baroque Catholicism, and most importantly, a fascinating Jewish girl who lives across the street. Their friendship will change her relationship with her governess forever, especially once the Jewish girl disappears. Loy's rhythmic, sensual prose animates a kaleidoscopic narrative, combining the intimacy of childhood emotions with nightmare glimpses of Fascist Italy during World War II.

The Water Door: A Novel

Literary

Other Press

Chocolat chez hanselmann (Un) (PETITE BIBLIOTHEQUE RIVAGES)

Rivages *

Routes De Poussiere

Alinéa

Schokolade bei Hanselmann.

Piper

La parola ebreo (Gli struzzi) (Italian Edition)

Classics

Einaudi

LA Parola

Le strade di polvere

Contemporary

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Loy, Rosetta. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Loy, Rosetta