The Abruzzo Trilogy

The desolate, impoverished mountain region of the Abruzzo during Mussolini's reign provides the backdrop for the three greatest novels of Ignazio Silone, one of the century's most important writers. Together, these revolutionary works create an indelible image of ordinary people struggling against overwhelming events.

A unique political coming of age story, now in English for the first time. An NYRB Classics Original Walter Ferranini has been born and bred a man of the left. His father was a worker and an anarchist; Walter himself is a Communist. In the 1930s, he left Mussolini’s Italy to fight Franco in Spain. After Franco’s victory, he left Spain for exile in the United States. With the end of the war, he returned to Italy to work as a labor organizer and to build a new revolutionary order. Now, in the late 1950s, Walter is a deputy in the Italian parliament. He is not happy about it. Parliamentary proceedings are too boring for words: the Communist Party seems to be filling up with ward heelers, timeservers, and profiteers. For Walter, the political has always taken precedence over the personal, but now there seems to be no refuge for him anywhere. The puritanical party disapproves of his relationship with Nuccia, a tender, quizzical, deeply intelligent editor who is separated but not divorced, while Walter is worried about his health, haunted by his past, and increasingly troubled by knotty questions of both theory and practice. Walter is, always has been, and always will be a Communist, he has no doubt about that, and yet something has changed. Communism no longer explains the life he is living, the future he hoped for, or, perhaps most troubling of all, the life he has led.

Set and written in Fascist Italy, this book exposes that regime's use of brute force for the body and lies for the mind. Through the story of the once exiled Pietro Spina, Italy comes alive with priests and peasants, students and revolutionaries, all on the brink of war.

PBS wine guru Mark Oldman quenches the universal thirst for the affordable gems coveted by insiders. Weary of buying the same old wines again and again? Wine personality Mark Oldman—known to millions of PBS viewers as a main judge on The Winemakers and winner of the Georges Duboeuf Wine Book of the Year Award—is here to rescue your taste buds with a groundbreaking guide to irresistible wines of moderate cost and maximum appeal. In his signature style that Bon Appétit calls "wine speak without the geek," Oldman uses insightful prose, hilarious anecdotes, and ingenious graphics to reveal the secret wines that everyone wishes they were drinking. Not only does he provide the inside scoop on each wine type's taste, cost, pronunciation, and food affinities, but he details the exclusive picks of more than 130 wine-passionate "Bravehearts," including Tom Colicchio, Guy Fieri, and Jodie Foster. Entertaining like no other, this is a guide for everyone who wants to drink like an insider without breaking the bank.

One of the major figures of twentieth-century European literature, Ignazio Silone (1900–78) is the subject of this award-winning new biography by the noted Italian historian Stanislao G. Pugliese. A founding member of the Italian Communist Party, Silone took up writing only after being expelled from the PCI and garnered immediate success with his first book, Fontamara, the most influential and widely translated work of antifascism in the 1930s. In World War II, the U.S. Army printed unauthorized versions of it, along with Silone's Bread and Wine, and distributed them throughout Italy during the country's Nazi occupation. During the cold war, he was an outspoken opponent of Soviet oppression and was twice considered for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Twenty years after his death, Silone was the object of controversy when reports arose indicating that he had been an informant for the Fascist police. Pugliese's biography, the most comprehensive work on Silone by far and the first full-length biography to be published in English, evaluates all the evidence and paints a portrait of a complex figure whose life and work bear themes with contemporary relevance and resonance. Bitter Spring, the winner of the 2008 Fraenkel Prize in Contemporary History, is a memorable biography of one of the twentieth century's greatest writers against totalitarianism in all its forms, set amid one of the most troubled moments in modern history.

A young man and his Italian teacher form an unlikely friendship in this novel of hope, heartbreak and the Italian-American experience. Fresh out of college, Carter Quinn has returned to his home in North Providence, Rhode Island, unsure of just about everything except his plans to go to Italy and pursue the woman of his dreams. To do that, he needs to learn to speak Italian, and there’s only one man who can teach him—if Carter can survive him. Giancarlo Rosa is nobody's fool. The middle-aged music professor does offer Italian lessons, but only to those who are truly dedicated. Carter will have to prove himself with strict discipline, hours of study, and respect for his teacher’s privacy. Giancarlo doesn’t care to be asked about his personal life—why he hasn't written music in years, why he lives alone, and why he left his homeland in the first place. While Carter sees Italy as a land of romance, Giancarlo knows what disappointments live under the Abruzzo sky. But soon the mentor and student develop a friendship that brings them to the old country together. In the land of sun, wine, new romance, and old wounds, each man embarks on his own journey of the heart…

Sergei Dovlatov's subtle, dark–edged humor and wry observations are in full force in The Suitcase as he examines eight objects—the items he brought with him in his luggage upon his emigration from the U.S.S.R. These seemingly undistinguished possessions, stuffed into a worn–out suitcase, take on a riotously funny life of their own as Dovlatov inventories the circumstances under which he acquired them, occasioning a brilliant series of interconnected tales: A poplin shirt evokes the bittersweet story of a courtship and marriage, while a pair of boots (of the kind only the Nomenklatura can afford) calls up the hilarious conclusion to an official banquet. Some driving gloves—remnants of Dovlatov's short–lived acting career—share space with neon–green crepe socks, reminders of a failed black–market scam. And in curious juxtaposition, the belt from a prison guard's uniform lies next to a stained jacket that once belonged to Fernand Léger. Imbued with a comic nostalgia overlaid with Dovlatov's characteristically dry wit, The Suitcase is an intensely human, delightfully ironic novel from "the finest Soviet satirist to appear in English since Vladimir Voinovich."

Through 1996 and 1997 bestselling author Joe McGinniss followed the Italian football season from Castel di Sangro, a small town nestled in the Abruzzi region of Italy. The motley crew that comprised the di Sangro soccer team in the early 90s masked an unparalleled prowess for playing soccer. This is the story of a team and a town with no aspirations, just a passion for the game, and how that passion allowed this team to rise to the top of the professional Italian soccer league. With the lust for life of Robert Crichton's THE SECRET OF SANTA VITTORIA and the sporting dreams of modern movie classic FIELDS OF DREAMS, THE MIRACLE OF CASTEL DI SANGRO is an ebullient story of how a two-hour game transformed a dot on the map into a place of magic, miracles and wonder.