In a Dark Wood: A Memoir - Softcover

Luzzi, Joseph

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0062357522 ISBN 13: 9780062357526

Publisher: Harper Perennial, 2016

Synopsis

On a cold November morning, Joseph Luzzi 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 in Rhode Island to mourn and to care for his infant daughter. Adrift and grieving, Luzzi found himself sharing Dante's dark wood with an intimacy that years of scholarship had never shown him. As Luzzi grapples with his loss and struggles to rebuild the life he had known, he shepherds readers through a universally relatable journey of suffering with wisdom and compassion.

Blending heartrending memoir and meditations on the power of great art to give us strength in our darkest moments, In a Dark Wood is a poignant and surprising affirmation of life and love.

About this title

Review:

"Powerful and indispensable, Joseph Luzzi unites emotion and ideas in a work that defies categorization, except for the category marked 'brilliant.' If every academic wrote like this, the humanities would be prospering."--Gary Shteyngart, New York Times bestselling author of Little Failure and Super Sad True Love Story

"A heartfelt memoir...[Luzzi's] is a quest so universal that we can all fin ourselves in his struggle."--Christian Science Monitor

"Luzzi's new memoir transforms unthinkable tragedy into literary gold. More than simply a memoir of mourning, In a Dark Wood testifies to the life-giving importance of literature and what it has to teach us."--BookPage.com

"Luzzi's story is intensely personal, but holds universal appeal for anyone who has experienced love and loss. As he grasps blindly for routes out of his personal underworld, both he and the reader discover that only a change of mind and heart can open the way to love and fulfillment."--Booklist

"Luzzi honestly grapples with profound questions about being a man and father in this very literary and very personal work."--Publishers Weekly

"An engrossing struggle to build a life after enormous personal loss and the luminous power of literature to transform sorrow's exile into a kind of blessing."--New York Journal of Books

"This is not an academic book about Dante. It's an elegant and moving memoir of one man's journey through grief and finally back to life."--Albany Times Union

"Joseph Luzzi lived through something terrible, and has made something beautiful. In a Dark Wood is a memoir of love and loss; but more than that, it is a powerful testimony to the consolation--even salvation--that an engagement with great literature can supply."--Rebecca Mead, author of My Life in Middlemarch

"Heartbreaking. Heartrending. Heart-stopping."--Vanity Fair

"A forthright chronicle of emergence from darkness."--Kirkus Reviews

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: Harper Perennial
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 0062357522
• ISBN 13: 9780062357526
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 320