In a Dark Wood: A Memoir of Grief, Healing and the Mysteries of Love - Softcover

Luzzi, Joseph

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0008100667 ISBN 13: 9780008100667

Publisher: William Collins, 2016

Synopsis

A story of love and grief. ‘I became a widower and a father on the same day’ says Joseph Luzzi. His book tells how Dante’s ‘The Divine Comedy’ helped him to endure his grief, raise their infant daughter, and rediscover love.

On a cold November morning, Joseph Luzzi, a Dante professor, found himself racing to hospital – his wife, eight-and-a-half months pregnant, had been in a horrible car accident. In one terrible instant, Luzzi became both a widower and a first-time father. Adrift and grieving, Luzzi found himself sharing Dante’s dark wood with an intimacy that years of reading had never shown him: the words became a wise companion through the Inferno of his grief, his healing, and ultimately his rediscovered love.

About this title

Review:

‘‘In a Dark Wood’ charts Luzzi’s journey through the hell of mourning and the purgatory of recovery, juxtaposing diapers and dating with demons and the damned ... there are many shrewd observations’ Financial Times

Praise for Joseph Luzzi:

‘Touches, lightly and elegantly, on politics, history, geography, sociology, language, literature, film, food and family ... [There are] deeply felt stretches of memoir’ New York Times Book Review

‘A thoughtful book about exile, the sense of displacement and confusion that those driven from their roots carry with them forever’ Caroline Moorehead, Times Literary Supplement

From the Back Cover:

When you lose your whole world in a moment, where do you turn?

On a cold November morning, Joseph Luzzi, a Dante scholar and professor at Bard College, found himself racing to the hospital--his wife, Katherine, eight-and-a-half months pregnant, had been in a horrible car accident. In one terrible instant, Luzzi became both a widower and a first-time father.

In the aftermath of unthinkable tragedy, Luzzi relied on the support of his Italian immigrant family, returning to his childhood home to grieve and care for his infant daughter. But it wasn't until he turned to The Divine Comedy--a poem he had devoted his life to studying and teaching--that he learned how to resurrect his life. Following the same structure as Dante's epic poem, Luzzi is shepherded out of his own "dark wood," passing through the grief-stricken Inferno, the Purgatory of healing, and ultimately stepping into the Paradise of rediscovered love.

Beautifully written, poignant, insightful, and unflinchingly honest, In a Dark Wood is a hybrid of heartrending memoir and a meditation on the power of great art to give us strength in our darkest moments. Drawing us into hell and back, it is Dante's journey, Joseph Luzzi's, and our very own.

About this edition

• Publisher: William Collins
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 0008100667
• ISBN 13: 9780008100667
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 320