A Test of Powers
WRITINGS ON CRITICISM AND LITERARY INSTITUTIONS
Distributed for Seagull Books
Translated by Alberto Toscano
304 pages | 6 x 9 | © 2016
Originally published in Italian in 1965, A Test of Powers was immediately seen as one of the central texts of Italian intellectual life. By the time of the 1968 student revolts, it was clear that Franco Fortini had anticipated many of the themes and concerns of the New Left, which is no surprise, given that Fortini had spent more than two decades immersed in fierce ideological debates over anti-Fascism, organizing, the alliance between progressivism and literature, and other topics that found their way into A Test of Powers. In addition to politically focused essays, the book also features essays on a range of writers who influenced Fortini, including Kafka, Pasternak, Eric Auerbach, Proust, and Brecht.
Praise for Fortini’s The Dogs of the Sinai
“An elegant and provocative project — the first book of Fortini’s prose to appear in English translation — that challenges one’s political assumptions about the conflict between Israel and Palestine, not only at the time of the Six-Day War but also today. . . . Toscano has done a masterful job of rendering Fortini’s often difficult prose into a fluid and concise English.”—Los Angeles Review of Books
“Forensic and devastating.”—Times Literary Supplement
“Fortini’s poetic production, literary criticism, political writings, translations, and journalism have assured him a position of the first rank among intellectuals of the Italian postwar period.”—Italica
The World Saved by Kids
AND OTHER EPICS
Distributed for Seagull Books
Translated by Cristina Viti
264 pages | 1 halftone | 5 x 8 1/2 | © 2016
First published in Italian in 1968, The World Saved by Kids was written in the aftermath of deep personal change and in the context of what Elsa Morante called the “great youth movement exploding against the funereal machinations of the organized contemporary world.” Morante believed that it was only the youth who could truly hear her revolutionary call. With the fiftieth anniversary of the tumultuous events of 1968 approaching, there couldn’t be a more timely moment for this first English translation of Morante’s work to appear.
Greeted by Antonio Porta as one of the most important books of its decade, The World Saved by Kids showcases Morante’s true mastery of tone, rhythm, and imagery as she works elegy, parody, storytelling, song, and more into an act of linguistic magic through which Gramsci and Rimbaud, Christ and Antigone, Mozart and Simone Weil, and a host of other figures join the sassy, vulnerable neighborhood kids in a renewal of the word’s timeless, revolutionary power to explore and celebrate life’s insoluble paradox.
Morante gained international recognition and critical acclaim for her novels History, Arturo’s Island, and Aracoeli, and The World Saved By Kids may be her best book and the one that most closely represents her spirit.
