Spatriati

Following two outcasts'' tumultuous friendship, this brilliant novel captures the probing, passionate nature of a generation of global citizens, exploring sexuality and identity. Claudia enters Francesco’s life on a sunny morning, in the school’s entrance hall: it’s a bolt of lightning, the birth of an entirely new kind of desire, which is, above all, the desire for life. Claudia is peerless and self-assured, extravagant; Francesco is introverted, burning with erotic curiosity, dominated by rustic faith, uncertain. She provokes him: “Did you know that your mother and my father were lovers?” But, in the eyes of that meek boy, she glimpses a spark of diversity, she sees herself in him. Claudia finds the countryside stifling; as soon as she can, she escapes, first to Milan and then to Berlin, the European capital of transgression. Francesco stays put and digs inside himself in an increasingly urgent effort to understand who he is. They become adults together, in a symbiotic game of escape and pursuit, in which they always end up finding each other. Mario Desiati depicts the countless complexities of an uneven, fluid, and uprooted generation: his own. The generation of those who are 40 years old today and weren’t afraid to stray far from home in order to find their place in the world, of those who truly feel like citizens of Europe. With a poetic yet biting style, capable of great tenderness, Desiati depicts the myriad forms that desire can assume when given free rein to manifest itself. Without any fear of plucking the chords of romanticism, without any false modesty as he delves into the coarsest details of sensuality and instinct, Desiati interrogates sex and reveals it for what it is: one of the many postures human beings invent in their search for happiness.

Auteur
Mario Desiati, originally from Martina, Italy, is the author of eleven novels, including his English debut, Spatriati, which received Italy’s most prestigious literary award, the Strega Prize. His novel Il paese delle spose infelici is the basis of Pippo Mezzapesa’s film of the same name; his novel Ternitti was a finalist for the Strega Prize. His books have been translated into thirteen languages. He lives in Apulia, Italy.

Michael F. Moore is the award-winning translator, most recently, of The Betrothed, by Alessandro Manzoni, hailed as a landmark literary event. His translations range from twentieth-century classics—Agostino by Alberto Moravia and The Drowned and the Saved by Primo Levi—to contemporary novels, including Live Bait, by Fabio Genovesi. Moore is the former chair of the PEN/Heim Translation Fund and has a PhD in Italian from New York University. For many years he was also an interpreter at the United Nations and a full-time staff member of the Permanent Mission of Italy to the United Nations.

Texte du rabat

Following two outcasts' tumultuous friendship, this brilliant novel captures the probing, passionate nature of a generation of global citizens, exploring sexuality and identity.

Claudia enters Francesco’s life on a sunny morning, in the school’s entrance hall: it’s a bolt of lightning, the birth of an entirely new kind of desire, which is, above all, the desire for life. Claudia is peerless and self-assured, extravagant; Francesco is introverted, burning with erotic curiosity, dominated by rustic faith, uncertain. She provokes him: "Did you know that your mother and my father were lovers?" But, in the eyes of that meek boy, she glimpses a spark of diversity, she sees herself in him. Claudia finds the countryside stifling; as soon as she can, she escapes, first to Milan and then to Berlin, the European capital of transgression. Francesco stays put and digs inside himself in an increasingly urgent effort to understand who he is. They become adults together, in a symbiotic game of escape and pursuit, in which they always end up finding each other.

Mario Desiati depicts the countless complexities of an uneven, fluid, and uprooted generation: his own. The generation of those who are 40 years old today and weren’t afraid to stray far from home in order to find their place in the world, of those who truly feel like citizens of Europe. With a poetic yet biting style, capable of great tenderness, Desiati depicts the myriad forms that desire can assume when given free rein to manifest itself. Without any fear of plucking the chords of romanticism, without any false modesty as he delves into the coarsest details of sensuality and instinct, Desiati interrogates sex and reveals it for what it is: one of the many postures human beings invent in their search for happiness.

Résumé
Following two outcasts’ tumultuous friendship, this brilliant, Strega Prize–winning novel captures the probing, passionate nature of a generation of global citizens, exploring sexuality and identity.

I never understood, of the two of us, which one was warm and which cold, but I consider myself lucky to have met my opposite front in Claudia Fanelli, the spatriata, the name people around here use for the uncertain, the odd, the unclassifiable and sometimes the shiftless or orphans, as well as unmarried men or women, vagrants and vagabonds, or even, in the case that concerns us, the emancipated.

Claudia enters Francesco’s life on a sunny morning, in the school’s entrance hall: it’s a bolt of lightning, the birth of an entirely new kind of desire, which is, above all, the desire for life. Claudia is peerless and self-assured, extravagant; Francesco is introverted, burning with erotic curiosity, dominated by rustic faith, uncertain. She provokes him: “Did you know that your mother and my father were lovers?” But in the eyes of that meek boy, she glimpses a spark of rebellion: she sees herself in him. They become adults together, in a symbiotic game of escape and pursuit, in which they always end up finding each other.

Mario Desiati captures the complexities of a fluid, uprooted generation: his own. A generation around forty years old today, who weren’t afraid to stray far from home to find their place in the world, who truly feel like citizens of Europe. With a poetic yet biting style, capable of great tenderness, Desiati depicts the myriad forms that desire can assume when given free rein. Without any fear of plucking the chords of romanticism, without any false modesty as he delves into the coarsest details of sensuality and instinct.

Échantillon de lecture
When a cold-air front meets a warm-air mass on land, the warm air rises. Storms are generated.
Rain and lightning, water and fire. I never understood, of the two of us, which one was warm and which cold, but I consider myself lucky to have met my opposite front in Claudia Fanelli, the spatriata, the name people around here use for the uncertain, the odd, the unclassifiable and sometimes the shiftless or orphans, as well as unmarried men or women, vagrants and vagabonds, or even, in the case that concerns us, the emancipated. The first time I noticed her was in the school lobby, and I desired her red hair, her moon-white skin, her prominent nose. She seemed to have fallen from another world, a world more enlightened and evolved.
My name is Francesco Veleno. I am the only child of Elisa Fortuna and Vincenzo Veleno, two former amateur athletes who fell in love during an episode of Games without Frontiers, and for my entire childhood they raised me with the belief that I would redeem them from the mysterious accident of having brought me into the world. Many years would go by before I realized that many relationships carry on, as Claudia would have said, for “official reasons.” It is also thanks to her that I would realize that there are no official reasons so strict as to require three s…