Abba Abba - Softcover

Burgess, Anthony; Burgess

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0099282720 ISBN 13: 9780099282723

Publisher: Vintage Classics, 2000

Synopsis

ABBA ABBA is about two poets who may or may not have met in Rome in 1820-1821. One was John Keats, who was dying in a house on the Spanish Steps. The other was Giuseppe Gioacchino Belli a great poet, little known outside Rome, since he wrote in the rough, dirty, blasphemous dialect of the Roman streets. The first part of the book is about Keats and Belli. The second part presents Belli himself as poet, translated by Mr Burgess. If Belli knew Keats, did Keats influence him? If Keats knew Belli, would Keats, if he had lived, have become a sort of English Belli? Hard and unanswerable questions. Anthony Burgess means his book merely to be enjoyable and perhaps touching.

About this title

Review

"Arguably the most gifted novelist." - "The Times"

From the Publisher

A tour de force
Abba Abba is about two poets who may or may not have met in Rome in 1820-1821. One was John Keats, who was dying in a house on the Spanish Steps. The other was Giuseppe Gioacchino Belli – a great poet, little known outside Rome, since he wrote in the rough, dirty, blasphemous dialect of the Roman streets. The first part of this book is about Keats and Belli. The second part presents Belli himself as poet, translated by Anthony Burgess.

‘Scholarship and imagination blend together here to produce an intensely literary book that reads as if it were a period document’ Anthony Curtis, Financial Times

‘Burgess is arguably one of the most gifted novelists in English’ Robert Nye, The Times

About this edition

• Publisher: Vintage Classics
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0099282720
• ISBN 13: 9780099282723
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 144