The Color Line

Informationen zum Autor Igiaba Scego was born in Rome to a family of Somali ancestry. She holds a PhD in education on postcolonial subjects and has done extensive academic work in Italy and around the world. Her memoir La mia casa è dove sono won Italy's prestigious Mondello Prize, while La linea del colore was awarded with Premio Napoli and Scego received the International Award Viareggio-Répaci in 2021. Her other novels include Oltre Babilonia (2008) and Adua (2015), both available in English. She is a frequent contributor to La Lettura, literary supplement to Corriere della Sera , and to the magazines Internazionale and Confronti . She also co-edited the anthology series Africana (Feltrinelli), with Chiara Piaggio. John Cullen (19422021) is the translator of many books from Spanish, French, German, and Italian, including Siegfried Lenz's The Turncoat , Juli Zeh's Empty Hearts , Patrick Modiano's Villa Triste , Kamel Daoud's The Meursault Investigation , and Philippe Claudel's Brodeck . Gregory Conti has translated numerous works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry from Italian including works by Emilio Lussu, Rosetta Loy, Elisa Biagini, and Paolo Rumiz. He is a regular contributor to the literary quarterly Raritan . Klappentext "Inspired by true events, this gorgeous, haunting novel intertwines the lives of two Black female artists more than a century apart, both outsiders in Italy. It was the middle of the nineteenth century when Lafanu Brown audaciously decided to become an artist. In the wake of the American Civil War, life was especially tough for Black women, but she didn't let that stop her. The daughter of a Chippewa woman and an African-Haitian man, Lafanu had the rare opportunity to study, travel, and follow her dreams, thanks to her indomitable spirit, but not without facing intolerance and violence. Now, in 1887, living in Rome as one of the city's most established painters, she is ready to tell her fiancâe about her difficult life, which began in a poor family forty years earlier. In 2019, an Italian art curator of Somali origin is desperately trying to bring to Europe her younger cousin, who is only sixteen and has already tried to reach Italy on a long, treacherous journey. While organizing an art exhibition that will combine the paintings of Lafanu Brown with the artworks of young migrants, the curator becomes more and more obsessed with the life and secrets of the nineteenth-century painter. Weaving together these two vibrant voices, Igiaba Scego has crafted a powerful exploration of what it means to be "other," to be a woman, and particularly a Black woman, in a foreign country, yesterday and today"-- Leseprobe PROLOGUE Rome, 1887 Tumult in the Square The first news of the massacre appeared in the French-language Journal de St.-Pétersbourg , closely followed by The Times of London. Meager information, scanty details. A few hackneyed words. The darkness of unexpected loss. The news came out of East Africa and was received in Rome with ever-increasing dismay. Italians had died. They had died in battle, or maybe in an ambush. Neither the Journal nor The Times was definitive on this point. The only certainty was that Italians had died far from home, and that they had died most horribly. One hundred corpses on the battlefield. Two hundred corpses, and then three hundred. No, five hundred. Five hundred Italian corpses. A round number. Five hundred dead in East Africa. But how had they died? And what had they been doing down there in Africa, among the palms and the baobabs? Among the mirages and the mermaids? And then a name suddenly leaped out of the pages of those European newspapers. The name was Dogali. A name known, before the traged...

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"Inspired by true events, this gorgeous, haunting novel intertwines the lives of two Black female artists more than a century apart, both outsiders in Italy. It was the middle of the nineteenth century when Lafanu Brown audaciously decided to become an artist. In the wake of the American Civil War, life was especially tough for Black women, but she didn't let that stop her. The daughter of a Chippewa woman and an African-Haitian man, Lafanu had the rare opportunity to study, travel, and follow her dreams, thanks to her indomitable spirit, but not without facing intolerance and violence. Now, in 1887, living in Rome as one of the city's most established painters, she is ready to tell her fiancâe about her difficult life, which began in a poor family forty years earlier. In 2019, an Italian art curator of Somali origin is desperately trying to bring to Europe her younger cousin, who is only sixteen and has already tried to reach Italy on a long, treacherous journey. While organizing an art exhibition that will combine the paintings of Lafanu Brown with the artworks of young migrants, the curator becomes more and more obsessed with the life and secrets of the nineteenth-century painter. Weaving together these two vibrant voices, Igiaba Scego has crafted a powerful exploration of what it means to be "other," to be a woman, and particularly a Black woman, in a foreign country, yesterday and today"--

Échantillon de lecture
PROLOGUE
 
Rome, 1887 Tumult in the Square

The first news of the massacre appeared in the French-language Journal de St.-Pétersbourg, closely followed by The Times of London.
Meager information, scanty details. A few hackneyed words. The darkness of unexpected loss.
The news came out of East Africa and was received in Rome with ever-increasing dismay.
Italians had died.
They had died in battle, or maybe in an ambush. Neither the Journal nor The Times was definitive on this point.
The only certainty was that Italians had died far from home, and that they had died most horribly.
One hundred corpses on the battlefield. Two hundred corpses, and then three hundred.
No, five hundred. Five hundred Italian corpses. A round number.
Five hundred dead in East Africa.
But how had they died? And what had they been doing down there in Africa, among the palms and the baobabs? Among the mirages and the mermaids?
And then a name suddenly leaped out of the pages of those European newspapers.
The name was Dogali.
A name known, before the tragedy, to very few people in Italy.
The incident seemed just as obscure in Rome as anywhere else. There hadn’t been any official communication yet. Politicians were keeping quiet, and journalists were awaiting confirmation of what The Times and the Journal had reported in brief, third-page articles.
In the city, the name of Dogali was pronounced through clenched teeth. People in the highest military circles were especially concerned about the general bewilderment that would soon afflict the country.
Rome, however, was not daunted.
Nothing could bring her down. Decrepit millenarian that she was, Rome had seen some troubles in her life: arrogant condottieri, avid Landsknechte, corrupt clerics, young girls sacrificed for reasons of state. By now, the city was used to the rot.
Dogali. The name menaced the City of Seven Hills like a pack of mad dogs.
 
It was February 1, 1887, and Rome was enveloped in cold, crystal-clear air, in a great icy bubble. And so rich aristocrats took from their armoires their satin cloaks and their pure woolen overcoats, while poor people cast about desperately for some rags to cover their unhealthy limbs, prematurely aged by toil and rancor.
Rome, in the first hours of that first day of February 1887, was clad in hope. With a smile, she tried to defeat the icy air that had taken possession of her inhabitants’ fragile souls.
It was in such moments that the city shone like an Indian emerald. It was in such moments that Rome became Rome again.
But it didn’t last long. A vexing rain, an insidious wind, a crowd in tumult could suffice to undo all the ma…