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An Italian master's magnum opus about three generations of women and their unhappy marriages, now in the first-ever unabridged English translation.
Elsa Morante is one of the great writers of the twentieth century—Natalia Ginzburg said she was the writer of her own generation that she admired most—and yet her work remains little known in the United States. Morante's celebrated first novel, Lies and Sorcery, written during the war, when Morante, half-Jewish, was living in hiding, and published in 1948, is a sprawling 800-page novel in the grand tradition of Stendhal, Tolstoy, and Proust, spanning the lives of three generations of wildly eccentric women. Set in Sicily, the story is told by Elisa, who, after the sudden death of her parents, was adopted at a young age by a wealthy "fallen woman." Over the fifteen years that she has lived with her "protectress," Elisa has retreated into an imaginary world populated by relatives and ancestors. Beginning with the death of Elisa's guardian, Lies and Sorcery recounts this young woman's attempt to reclaim reality by uncovering the dark details of her family's tortured and dramatic history. The reader is drawn into a tale, sweeping in scope, of family secrets, of intrigue and treachery, that is also an exploration of political and social injustice. Throughout, Morante's elegant and elaborate prose as well as her drive to get at the heart of her characters' complex motivations and relationships and their all-too self-destructive behavior hold us spellbound.
A heavily abridged English translation of Lies and Sorcery came out in the 1950s under the title of House of Liars. Jenny McPhee's new translation is the first complete English rendering of the book that Georg Lukács considered the greatest of modern Italian novels.
"[A] thrilling saga of love and madness...Maintaining an ironic distance, Morante's lengthy but propulsive narrative describes in detail the characters' desires, fears, and superstitions, as well as the stultifying class divisions, religiosity, and financial troubles that define their lives. It's a tremendous accomplishment." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"[E]pic...Morante's novel is a masterpiece, and to have it finally translated into English in unabridged form is a great gift. A masterpiece by one of Italy's foremost modern writers." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
This information about Lies and Sorcery was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Elsa Morante (1912–1985) was an Italian novelist, poet, and translator. She was born in Rome and lived there nearly all her life. In 1941, she published her first collection of stories and married the novelist Alberto Moravia. Morante is best known for her novels Arturo's Island and La Storia. For her work, she was awarded both the Viareggio Prize and the Strega Prize.
Jenny McPhee is a translator and the author of the novels The Center of Things, No Ordinary Matter, and A Man of No Moon. For NYRB Classics she translated Curzio Malaparte's The Kremlin Ball and Natalia Ginzburg's Family Lexicon. She is the director for the Center of Applied Liberal Arts at New York University.
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