Silent Duchess, The - Softcover

Dacia Maraini

Softcover

ISBN 10: 190641372X ISBN 13: 9781906413729

Publisher: Arcadia Books, 2010

Synopsis

'Italy's most audacious female writer' - Sunday Times

'A fiction of elegance and charm' - Mail on Sunday

'Dacia Maraini is an artist of considerable power. The Silent Duchess is a novel that would have delighted Nabokov. It is brimming with detail, vividly presented in a style that is abrupt, spiky, and yet luxuriant. Every page presents one with the unexpected. It arouses intense feeling, it provokes thought.' - Scotsman

'The Silent Duchess succeeds through its accretion of details. A vivid and hushed account, Maraini's portrayal of the Duchess Marianna's life is blanketed in a strange beauty, like the snow-muffled landscape of winter.' - Observer

Won the Premio Campiello, Italy's most prestigious literary prize

Sold over a quarter of a million copies

Winner of the monthly 'Independent' Award for Foreign Fiction

Set in the mid-18th century, Dacia Maraini's unforgettable novel tells the story of three generations of the Ucria family, seen through the watchful eyes of the deaf-mute Duchess Marianna. Married at 13 to her own uncle and set apart from other people by her disability, she relentlessly searches for fulfilment in a society where women either face marriage and endless child-bearing or a life of renunciation within the walls of a convent.

About this title

Review:

'Her best novel in years - interspersed with evocatively detailed descriptions of day-to-day life: smells, food, medicaments and contraptions of every kind' --Times Literary Supplement

'Set in eighteenth-century Italy the story of our heroine, Marianna, and of her family is a fascinating one which manages totally to overpower the reader with its narrative urgency. Maraini brilliantly conveys the mixture of luxury and squalor in which the Sicilian aristocracy lived, and with great skill, communicates every detail through the eyes and nostrils of her Silent Duchess.' --Evening Standard

'Few other historical novelists have so forcefully expressed the sense that the age which they describe is a shaping force in the conduct of their characters - an astonishing achievement' --Independent

From the Back Cover:

'The Silent Duchess' won the Premio Campiello, Italy's most prestigious literary prize, selling over a quarter of a million copies. The novel is also a winner of the monthly 'Independent' Award for Foreign Fiction.

'Set in eighteenth-century Italy the story of our heroine, Marianna, and of her family is a fascinating one which manages totally to overpower the reader with its narrative urgency. Maraini brilliantly conveys the mixture of luxury and squalor in which the Sicilian aristocracy lived, and with great skill, communicates every detail through the eyes and nostrils of her Silent Duchess.'
FRANCIS KING, 'Evening Standard'

'Few other novelists have so forcefully expressed the sense that the age they describe is a shaping force in the conduct of their characters. 'The Silent Duchess' has the richness of a saga, and Maraini weaves striking scenes into the narrative with an ease, both memorable and inevitable.'
JOSEPH FARRELL, 'Independent'

''The Silent Duchess' succeeds through its accretion of details. A vivid and hushed account, Maraini's portrayal of the Duchess Marianna's life is blanketed in a strange beauty, like the snow-muffled landscape of winter.'
NICCI GERRARD, 'Observer'

'Dacia Maraini is an artist of considerable power. 'The Silent Duchess' is a novel that would have delighted Nabokov. It is brimming with detail, vividly presented in a style that is abrupt, spiky, and yet luxuriant. Every page presents one with the unexpected. It arouses intense feeling, it provokes thought.'
ALLAN MASSIE, 'Scotsman'

About this edition

• Publisher: Arcadia Books
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 190641372X
• ISBN 13: 9781906413729
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 300