Word: moravia
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...wonders Alberto Moravia (and perhaps Italo Calvino...
...Alberto Moravia...
...reader beware; the canny old master of Italian fiction has once again pulled a fast one. Of Alberto Moravia's five covertly political novels of the past three decades, 1934 is the most disguised. His previous novel, Time of Desecration (1980), was tricky enough; masquerading as a manual of kinky sex, it was, in fact, a riveting case history of the psychopathology of terrorism. In 1934, Moravia has obscured his true intentions by adopting the histrionic manner and high-flown diction of German romanticism. The effect is bizarre and not always convincing...
...Moravia's ostensible subject is suicide. His 27-year-old Italian hero, Lucio, is headed for Capri on holiday in 1934, the fateful year that was Mussolini's twelfth in power and Hitler's first. On the boat from Naples to the island, the young anti-Fascist asks himself: "Is it possible to live in despair and not wish for death?" At that moment his eyes lock with those of a German tourist, a teen-age girl who transfixes him with a pleading, desperate look. Lightning strikes. The girl, Beate, is accompanied by a husband as wickedly...
...else is ready for beatification? Some think Robert Penn Warren. Ralph Ellison, for one book, Invisible Man (1952). J B. Priestley? Alberto Moravia? Doris Lessing? Graham Greene? Jorge Luis Borges? The morally imposing Alexander Sofehenitsyn? Yes Certainly Samuel Beckett, the muttering old codger of modernism, who changed the spiritual and theatrical décor of the 20th century...