The Lost Father

by Marina Warner (Author)

• Used

  Hardcover
  1988

  $3.25

  The story of a family, bringing to life the forgotten heart of Italy, the Mezzogiorno, weakened by emigration, silenced by fascism. This is the imaginary memoir of an Italian family, from 1909 to the 1930s, with a framework in the present day. The narrator is drawn into the passion and prejudice of her own invention, and we see how memory, like folk memory distorts and mythologizes. Marina Warner is best known for her non-fictional work - The Dragon Empress , Alone of All Her Sex - The Myth and Cult of the Virgin Mary , Joan of Arc and Monuments and Maidens (Winner of the 1986 Fawcett Prize).

• Used

  Paperback
  1998

  $3.25

  Like Visconti's film The Leopard, this magnificent novel paints in sensuous colours the story of a family. It brings to new life the ancient disparaged south of the Italian peninsula, weakened by emigration, silenced by fascism. According to family legend, David Pittagora died as a result of a duel. His death is the mysterious pivot around which his grand-daughter, an independent modern woman, constructs an imaginary memoir of her mother's background and life. She follows the family as they emigrate to New York - where they find only humiliation and poverty - and after their return to Italy in the early 1920's. As she is drawn by the passions and prejudices of her own imagination, we see how family memory, like folk memory, weaves its own dreams.