"The first time I read Aracoeli, I found it almost pointlessly disturbing and shocking. On rereading it, I still found it disturbing and shocking, but I have also grown to admire it--perhaps because it is so dark and resists any attempt to classify it. In writing this novel, Morante may have knowingly sacrificed clarity and logic in order to express her vision of a chaotic world." (Lily Tuck, Woman of Rome: A Life of Elsa Morante ) Aracoeli --Elsa Morante's final novel--is the story of an aging man's attempt to recover ...
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"The first time I read Aracoeli, I found it almost pointlessly disturbing and shocking. On rereading it, I still found it disturbing and shocking, but I have also grown to admire it--perhaps because it is so dark and resists any attempt to classify it. In writing this novel, Morante may have knowingly sacrificed clarity and logic in order to express her vision of a chaotic world." (Lily Tuck, Woman of Rome: A Life of Elsa Morante ) Aracoeli --Elsa Morante's final novel--is the story of an aging man's attempt to recover the past and get his life on track in the process. The Aracoeli of the title is the narrator's deceased mother, who grew up in a small Spanish town before marrying an upper-class Italian navy ensign. The idyllic years she spends with her only son--Manuel, the narrator of the novel--are shattered when she contracts an incurable disease (probably syphilis) and becomes a nymphomaniac. Now, at the age of 43, Manuel, an unattractive, self-loathing, recovering drug addict who works a dead-end job at a small publishing house, decides to travel to her hometown in Spain in order to look for her. Filled with dreams and remembrances the novel creates a Sebaldian landscape of memory out of this painful journey, painting a portrait that is both touching and bleak. Appearing here for the first time in paperback--the hardcover was published in 1984-- Aracoeli is an important, and long-neglected, work in Morante's oeuvre.
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Add this copy of Aracoeli to cart. $8.36, good condition, Sold by ThriftBooks-Reno rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Reno, NV, UNITED STATES, published 1984 by Random House (NY).
Add this copy of Aracoeli to cart. $8.36, fair condition, Sold by ThriftBooks-Atlanta rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Brownstown, MI, UNITED STATES, published 1984 by Random House (NY).
Add this copy of Aracoeli to cart. $8.36, fair condition, Sold by ThriftBooks-Reno rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Reno, NV, UNITED STATES, published 1984 by Random House (NY).
Add this copy of Aracoeli to cart. $12.80, very good condition, Sold by ZENO'S rated 3.0 out of 5 stars, ships from San Francisco, CA, UNITED STATES, published 1984 by Random House (NY).
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Seller's Description:
New York. 1985. January 1985. Random House. 1st American Edition. Very Good in Dustjacket. Remainder Mark On Bottom Edge. 0394535189. Translated from the Italian by William Weaver. 311 pages. hardcover. Jacket painting: ‘Elvira' by Amedeo Modigliani, 1918. Jacket design: Susan Shapiro. keywords: Literature Translated Italy Women. FROM THE PUBLISHER-Long recognized as one of modern Italy's major writers, Elsa Morante won renewed acclaim in 1977 with the publication of her sweeping book about World War II, HISTORY: A NOVEL. Now, in her most important work to date, a novel of even greater emotional intensity and lyric power, she delves into the consciousness of one solitary, troubled individual to create an indelible image of contemporary man that stands among the great fictional achievements of our day. Her protagonist is Emanuele, a lonely man who makes his meager living in a Milan publishing house, and who spends his unoccupied hours in the pursuit of young men who cannot return his adoration. As Emanuele narrates with great feeling and insight the story of his impossible-seeming search for his mother's birthplace in the parched landscape of southern Spain, he gradually uncovers a fascinating and bizarre truth about his childhood in Fascist Italy. His mother's name, Aracoeli (‘Altar of Heaven' in Latin), is typical of the fervent piety of rural Andalusia where she was born. A woman of great beauty and great religious conviction, she is utterly devoted to Emanuele's father an officer in the Italian Royal Navy, who, like her, has the greatest respect for order, authority and duty. Emanuele grows up in a large, shadowy apartment in the Heights, an affluent Fascist neighborhood in Rome. He is passionately attached to his mother, who, like him, is a stranger, an outsider, in her husband's family. Their great hero in common is his namesake, Aracoeli's adored brother Manuel, who dies in the Spanish Civil War. But Emanuele's intimate bond with Aracoeli is strained by her second pregnancy and by the birth of a baby girl. When the child dies, Aracoeli has a severe breakdown and her behavior undergoes a radical transformation. Her reserve and dignity give way to insatiable, indiscriminate desire; soon she leaves her family behind, and Emanuele's fragile world is shattered forever. Vivid, relentless, beautiful and sometimes terrifying, ARACOELI, which has been translated with consummate artistry by William Weaver, is a work of enormous power. In scene after stunning scene, Elsa Morante evokes the tensions of daily life in Italy under Fascism, through the distorting crystal of Emanuele's memory. This is a cry from the heart-piercing, corrosive and unforgettable: a brilliant summing-up by one of the world's great living writers. inventory #353.
Add this copy of Aracoeli to cart. $20.00, very good condition, Sold by Between the Covers-Rare Books rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Gloucester City, NJ, UNITED STATES, published 1985 by Random House.
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Seller's Description:
Near Fine in Very Good jacket. First American edition. Second printing. Translated by William Weaver. Remainder mark on topedge, board bottom edges slightly faded, near fine in a lightly toned very good dust jacket with spine sunned and a tiny tear and slight fading to bottom front panel. A novel.
Add this copy of Aracoeli to cart. $20.97, new condition, Sold by Paperbackshop rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Bensenville, IL, UNITED STATES, published 2021 by Wagenbach Klaus GmbH.
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Seller's Description:
NY 1984 First edition. Random. Hardcover large octavo. 311p. Translated from Italian to English by William Weaver. Fine in Fine dj, no faults but one neat red remainder line drawn on closed bottom page ends. price not clipped. no owner marks.
Add this copy of Aracoeli to cart. $28.00, like new condition, Sold by Chris's rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Le Mans, FRANCE, published 1987 by FOLIO.
Add this copy of Aracoeli to cart. $28.36, new condition, Sold by Blackwell's rated 3.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Gloucester, GLOUCESTERSHIRE, UNITED KINGDOM, published by Wagenbach Klaus GmbH.
Add this copy of Aracoeli to cart. $28.52, new condition, Sold by Revaluation Books rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Exeter, DEVON, UNITED KINGDOM, published 1986 by GALLIMARD.
