{"title":"Books by Giorgio Bassani","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"9780141188362","title":"The Modern Classics Garden of the Finzi Continis","description":"This is a haunting, elegiac novel which captures the mood and atmosphere of Italy (and in particular Ferrara) in the last summers of the thirties, focusing on an aristocratic Jewish family moving imperceptibly towards its doom. Vittorio De Sica turned the book into a film in 1970, winning the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1974.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43206014632114,"sku":"9780141188362","price":10.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780141188362.jpg?v=1786011513"},{"product_id":"9780141192130","title":"Behind the Door","description":"\u003ci\u003e'It was useless to think I'd ever be able to throw open the door behind which I was yet again hiding ... Not now. Not ever.'\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSchool  is a place of unspoken hierarchies and rivalries for a young teenage  boy growing up in the provincial town of Ferrara. But as the everyday  classroom and playground dramas are played out, they begin to reflect  the disturbing undertones of 1930s Italy, and the narrator realizes that  being Jewish means he will always be excluded. The fourth book in  Bassani's \u003ci\u003eRomanzo di Ferrara\u003c\/i\u003e cycle, \u003ci\u003eBehind the Door\u003c\/i\u003e is a luminous portrayal of childhood friendship and the loss of innocence.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA new translation by Jamie McKendrick\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e'Giorgio Bassani is one of the great witnesses of this century, and one of its great artists' \u003ci\u003eGuardian\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e'Powerful new translations . . . Bassani began as a poet, and McKendrick's redelivery of this taut uncompromising fiction reveals resonance and generosity' Ali Smith","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56224388645237,"sku":"9780141192130","price":9.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780141192130_abeaa81b-f136-4b61-a4b4-522ab5904298.jpg?v=1786032733"},{"product_id":"9780141192161","title":"Within The Walls","description":"A new translation of Giorgio Bassani's award winning collection of novellas, which inspired his masterpiece \u003ci\u003eThe Garden of the Finzi-Continis.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA young working class woman abandoned by her bourgeois lover; the tensions of intermarriage between established classes and communities; a holocaust survivor seemingly back from the dead; a formidable socialist activist defying house arrest; the only surviving witness to the first local atrocity of the Second World War. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn these five unforgettable stories, Bassani gave life to the characters that would inform the \u003ci\u003eRomanzo di Ferrara, \u003c\/i\u003ehis suite of novels depicting life in the city. Moving, poetic, atmospheric and artfully observed, this collection is a distillation of Bassani's genius. It won the Strega Prize on first publication as \u003ci\u003eCinque Storie Ferraresi\u003c\/i\u003e in 1956, and established Bassani as one of the greatest Italian writers of the twentieth century.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e'Giorgio Bassani is one of the great witnesses of this century, and one of its great artists' \u003ci\u003eGuardian\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e'The most uncompromising, merciful and merciless writer' Ali Smith","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56224580010357,"sku":"9780141192161","price":10.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780141192161_06a3ea02-dd19-4fdf-9c65-1c2e799236e1.jpg?v=1786011711"},{"product_id":"9780141192123","title":"The Modern Classics the Smell of Hay","description":"A new translation of Giorgio Bassani's haunting collection of short stories that evoke 1930s Ferrara, with an introduction by Ali Smith.\u003cp\u003eIsolated lives and a lost world are evoked in these memorable stories set in the Jewish-Italian community of 1930s Ferrara. A young man's unrequited love; a strange disappearance; a faded hotel; a lonely funfair; the smell of mown hay at the gates of the Jewish Cemetery - these vivid, impressionistic snapshots build a picture of life's brevity and intensity. Part of the sequence including \u003ci\u003eThe Gold-Rimmed Spectacles \u003c\/i\u003eand \u003ci\u003eThe Garden of the Finzi-Continis, \u003c\/i\u003eand featuring people and places from these novels, \u003ci\u003eThe Smell of Hay \u003c\/i\u003eis told with a voice that is by turns intimate, ironic, elegiac and rueful.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis new translation contains two pieces, added by Bassani to his earlier collection, which have never appeared in English before.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e'Powerful new translations... Bassani began as a poet, and McKendrick's redelivery of this taut uncompromising fiction reveals resonance and generosity' Ali Smith\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e'Giorgio Bassani is one of the great witnesses of this century, and one of its great artists' \u003ci\u003eGuardian\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eGiorgio Bassani (1916-2000) was an Italian poet, novelist and editor. \u003ci\u003eThe Smell of Hay \u003c\/i\u003eis the last in a series of six works collected together as \u003ci\u003eIl romanzo di Ferrara. \u003c\/i\u003eOther works in the cycle include \u003ci\u003eThe Garden of the Finzi-Continis\u003c\/i\u003e, which received the Viareggio Prize and inspired an Academy Award-winning film adaptation by Vittorio de Sica, \u003ci\u003eThe Gold-Rimmed Spectacles, \u003c\/i\u003eand \u003ci\u003eWithin the Walls \u003c\/i\u003e(originally published as \u003ci\u003eFive Stories of Ferrara\u003c\/i\u003e), which won the Strega Prize.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eJamie McKendrick is a poet and translator. His translations of Bassani's \u003ci\u003eThe Garden of the Finzi-Continis \u003c\/i\u003eand \u003ci\u003eThe Gold-Rimmed Spectacles \u003c\/i\u003eare already available as Penguin Modern Classics, and he is in the process of translating the rest of the \u003ci\u003eRomanzo di Ferrara \u003c\/i\u003ecycle anew.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56224766919029,"sku":"9780141192123","price":9.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780141192123_5ae5a9f2-4dc9-4883-818f-ac01b3cd544d.jpg?v=1786011709"},{"product_id":"9780141192154","title":"The Gold-Rimmed Spectacles","description":"\u003cp\u003eInto the insular town of 1930s Ferrara, a new doctor arrives. Fadigati is hopeful and modern, and more than anything wants to fit into his new home. But his fresh, appealing appearance soon crumbles when the townsfolk discover his homosexuality, and the young man he pays to be his lover humiliates him publicly. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAs anti-Semitism spreads across Italy, the Jewish narrator of the tale begins to feel pity for the ostracized doctor, as the fickle nature of a community changing under political forces becomes clear.\u003ci\u003e The Gold-Rimmed Spectacles\u003c\/i\u003e is a gripping and tragic study of how lives can be destroyed by those we consider our neighbours.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56224767050101,"sku":"9780141192154","price":9.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780141192154_fc290c2b-2be0-475c-8a07-88c3534f4e09.jpg?v=1786011711"},{"product_id":"9780141192147","title":"The Heron","description":"\u003cb\u003e'Exquisite. . . a classic tour de force' \u003ci\u003eThe New York Times \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e'It struggled to keep itself aloft, to gain height. But then it suddenly gave up, and dropped as though it were breaking into many pieces'\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eEarly on a cold Sunday morning, forty-five-year-old Edgardo Limentani gets up to join a shooting party in the countryside surrounding the town of Ferrara. As the day passes, he contemplates his past, his disappointments and how he has got here. Like the birds he shoots, he realizes, he is trapped, broken, waiting alone for the final \u003ci\u003ecoup de grâce\u003c\/i\u003e. Then he sees a way out.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe fifth book in Bassani's \u003ci\u003eNovel of Ferrara\u003c\/i\u003e sequence, and his final novel, \u003ci\u003eThe Heron\u003c\/i\u003e is a taut, poignant portrait of a middle-aged man's reckoning with his life.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56311570366837,"sku":"9780141192147","price":9.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780141192147_8ea88636-0e37-4e1e-9ab3-535d9dd86123.jpg?v=1786011710"}],"url":"https:\/\/backstory.london\/collections\/author-giorgio-bassani.oembed","provider":"Backstory","version":"1.0","type":"link"}