“Nikita had no desire to go, but he had long since grown accustomed to not having a will of his own and serving others.” Let’s start with the title “Master and Servant” which in other editions and translations had been translated into Master and Servant. It is precisely through the title that one has already parachuted into a hidden world of moral and philological meanings on the substantial difference between Servant and Servant, and from...
“Misfortune had made a man out of him.” Moving like few other books, capable of touching the dormant childhood within each of us. With this long story, Bassani delves into his memories as a boy, up to take us to the beginning of the school year of 1929-30 in a classical high school, in his beloved Ferrara (the city of Bassani’s heart!). The shyness of the protagonist and a character that has not yet fully...
“Sometimes just being with someone helps you grow.” Although we really like the author’s style, with its dilated times, inside and outside the thoughts of the protagonist, able to indirectly tell the essence of Japanese culture and lifestyle, this time we have found the initial part of the story too long. A penance not deserved by the reader, like a long airport runway, which the plane is forced to travel to the last centimeter of...
“FRIDAY RE-VERSO” “There was nothing I could say about that world except that I had known it, that it had been mine, that it still was.” Cosidering that there is a lot to talk about, here is a brief summary of the plot: forced by her father to separate from his beloved Jade, David Axelrod sets the family home on fire, with nebulous and somewhat delusional purposes. Here it begins: for four years, two of...
“True beauty is always a little creepy.” Classic among the classics of training books, first printed in the early nineties, destined to remain over time, thanks to the topics covered: love, sexuality, friendship, responsibility, social recognition. In other words, what other writers, in other times, would have defined the shadow line. The story is set in a small college in Vermont, where six students of different backgrounds (even if some of them do everything to...
“The new rich rarely feel full.” Original theatrical text, out of the usual literary production of Ignazio Silone, but without giving way to a lower quality of the work. Winner of the Campiello Prize in 1968, the book collects the best of the author’s intimate poetic house, digging with his bare hands into one of the themes most dear to him: the relationship between man and the Church. To do this he makes use of...
“Pain, when it comes, is not at all what we expect it to be.” Self-criticism: it may be that we did not understand the book, it may be that we were not able to immerse ourselves completely in the spirit that the writer wanted to convey to us, but we were disappointed by the text. We decided to open this writing in this way out of respect for the story told and for the writer’s...
“FRIDAY RE-VERSO” “The gods grant a few people the privilege of covering the space between one day and another with hope.” Esiste, tra le pagine di quell’opera immortale che è l’Odissea, la descrizione di un istante perfetto: è il momento in cui Ulisse e Penelope si ritrovano nel loro tempo di amanti, si riconoscono in una domanda e in una risposta, le loro storie parallele riunite in un quell’incastro di attimi. È il momento di...
“I will always remember the admiration in his eyes, the thought of having grown something better than an ornament.” Beautiful book, which remains within the many good and bad intentions, in a non-linear story, and in the impossibility (at least for us) whether to define it as a novel or a set of short stories. A pleasant reading that we did not expect and that made us reach the final point of the text with...
“A fence can break down in a moment.” First book published by Ishiguro, after the victory of the nobel in 2017, and in a certain sense it is noticeable because it is outside its usual narrative bed. In this regard, we think it is a gift that the writer wanted to give to himself and to those who love his pen, whatever path he wanted to take. Klara is an android (or Artificial Friend), which...
