That Awful Mess on the Via Merulana (New York Review Books Classics)

Gadda, Carlo Emilio

ISBN 10: 1590172221 / ISBN 13: 9781590172223

Published by NYRB Classics, 2007

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Synopsis:

In a large apartment house in central Rome, two crimes are committed within a matter of days: a burglary, in which a good deal of money and precious jewels are taken, and a murder, as a young woman whose husband is out of town is found with her throat cut. Called in to investigate, melancholy Detective Ciccio, a secret admirer of the murdered woman and a friend of her husband's, discovers that almost everyone in the apartment building is somehow involved in the case, and with each new development the mystery only deepens and broadens. Gadda's sublimely different detective story presents a scathing picture of fascist Italy while tracking the elusiveness of the truth, the impossibility of proof, and the infinite complexity of the workings of fate, showing how they come into conflict with the demands of justice and love. Italo Calvino, Pier Paolo Pasolini, and Alberto Moravia all considered That Awful Mess on the Via Merulana to be the great modern Italian novel. Unquestionably, it is a work of universal significance and protean genius: a rich social novel, a comic opera, an act of political resistance, a blazing feat of baroque wordplay, and a haunting story of life and death.

About the Author: Carlo Emilio Gadda (1893 1973) was born in Milan, where he spent a "tormented childhood and even more miserable adolescence." He earned a degree in engineering, volunteered to fight in World War I, and was taken prisoner by the Germans. After the war, he began to write while working as an engineer in countries as far afield as Argentina. Acquainted with Grief, Gadda's first novel, set in an imaginary South American country, appeared in 1938. His masterpiece, That Awful Mess on the Via Merulana, was serialized after the war, but only published as a book in 1957. Both novels, like much else that Gadda wrote, were left incomplete. Among Gadda's other notable works are essays, film and radio scripts, a travel book, and his journals from World War I.

Bibliographic Details

Title: That Awful Mess on the Via Merulana (New ...
Publisher: NYRB Classics
Publication Date: 2007
Binding: Soft cover
Condition: very_good