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Details

About the Meeting:

  • We will read and discuss in ITALIAN with a NATIVE and Certified Italian Tutor (Advanced Beginner and Intermediate Level are welcomed);
  • You are NOT forced to speak in Italian, you can jut listen if you prefer so;
  • We will meet on Skype - details provided upon "seat" reservation
  • Minimum 2 people in class, otherwise no meeting
  • The Meeting will last 1 hour and 15 minutes (if more than 4 people, the time will be extended to give fair time amount to practice to all);
  • Price: $10 (via VENMO or Zelle) - before entering the session
  • For any question, write to me at: valentina.caprio@gmail.com

PLOT:
"Cosima" tells the story of an aspiring writer growing up in Nuoro, Sardinia during the last decades of the nineteenth century when formal education for women was rare and literary careers unheard-of. Based on Deledda's own life, the work describes a young woman's struggle against the dismay and disapproval of her family and friends at her creative ambitions. Yet it also reads like a charming fable with details of family life, rural traditions and wild bandits, and it is as much a novel of memory as of character or action. Deledda's characters are poor country folk driven by some predetermined force. Their loves are tragic, their lives as hard and as rigidly controlled as nature itself in the hills of Sardinia. Deledda creates memorable figures who play out their lives against this backdrop of mountains and bare plains, sheepfolds and vineyards. Shimmering in the distance is the sea and escape - for a few - to the Continent or America.

In 1926 Grazia Deledda became the second woman and the second Italian to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature.
She wrote thirty-three novels, including "Reeds in the Wind," and many books of short stories, almost all set on Sardinia. Her work has become well known to English-speaking readers through Martha King's translations for Italica Press.

Book Reviews:
1- I found this book really singular in the way the only name the author changed was her own, at least amongst her family. Keeping the real names of her siblings and parents makes the story feel so authentic. The way it’s told is also great; though she has the benefit of hindsight, her perspective is convincingly that of the young girl that she is meant to be at the time, which makes it flow beautifully. Nevertheless, the events that take place are so intense they almost feel like fiction, even though they are very much grounded in reality.
I also loved how meta this book is. Through the recollection of her life, the author exposes the sources of her inspiration, the people behind her fictional characters and the very descriptions of places she refers to in her body of work. She keeps what makes her narrative charming but adapts it for semi-non-fiction. So cool.

2- This book about a girl named Cosima growing up in Sardinia in the late 1800s and is based on the author's own life. She is a a writer and a daydreamer, and uses her imagination to make the most of her sheltered world. It's an interesting look at life in Sardinia at this time. Her descriptions of her wild Sardinian landscape and of her dreams of love and travel definitely stirred my imagination and reminded me of my own adolesence.

3- A beautifully written story of a young girl growing up in a small Italian village and her struggles to become a writer. It appears to be basically an autobiography of Grazia Deledda herself.

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