The Story of My Purity - Hardcover

Pacifico, Francesco

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0374270449 ISBN 13: 9780374270445

Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux, 2013

Synopsis

An exuberant tale of a man caught between faith and freedom, from one of Italy's most talented young novelists

Thirty years old, growing flabby in a sexless marriage, Piero Rosini has decided to dedicate his life to Jesus. He's renounced the novels and American music that were filling his head with bullshit; he's moved out of his fancy bourgeois neighborhood, which was keeping him from finding spiritual purity and the Lord's truth. Now that he and his wife have settled into an unfinished housing development on the far outskirts of Rome, he'll be able to really concentrate on his job at an ultraconservative Catholic publishing house, editing books that highlight the decadence and degradation of modern society, including one claiming that Pope John Paul II was secretly Jewish. But Piero is suffocating. He worries thatThe Jewish Pope might be taking things too far. He can't get his beautiful sister-in-law out of his head. Temptations are breaking down his religious resolve. He decides to flee to Paris, which turns out not to be the best way of guarding his purity.

With a charismatic narrator as familiar with the finer points of Christian theology as with the floor layout of IKEA and the schedules of European budget airlines, Francesco Pacifico's exuberant novel brings us Europe old and new and the inner workings of a conflicted but always compelling mind. The Story of My Purity is fiction with great humor, intelligence, neuroticism, and vision, from a young writer at the beginning of a tremendous career.

About this title

Review

A rich and surprising, bright and liberal novel, dense with stories and even courageous, because of the topics it deals with and the profound lightness with which it deals with them (Rolling Stone)

Pacifico has an uber-literary horizon which is as classical as it is experimental (Vogue Italia)

The Story of My Purity manages to be both absurd and sincere; it is impossible to resist Piero Rosini's precise narration of his struggle to be a saint as he endures so many earthly temptations. A joy to read' (Dana Spiotta)

About the Author

Francesco Pacifico has written for a number of Italian publications, as well as forRolling Stone and GQ, and has translated the works of Henry Miller, Allen Ginsberg, Dave Eggers, Will Eisner, Dana Spiotta, and more. He is the author of two novels and lives in Rome.

About this edition

• Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 0374270449
• ISBN 13: 9780374270445
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 293