- New Arrivals
Fiction- Historical FictionCrime & ThrillersMysteryScience-FictionFantasyPoetryRomanceChildren’s BooksYoung Adult
- Biographies & MemoirsHistoryCurrent AffairsTech & ScienceBusinessSelf-DevelopmentTravelThe ArtsFood & WineReligion & SpiritualitySportsHumor
Children’s BooksListsBlogGift CardsMy ListsGames- About & Help
- About Tertulia
- Membership & Co-Ownership
- Shipping & Delivery
- Orders & Payments
- Contact Support
- Send App Feedback
- Follow us
- Download the app
The co-op bookstore for avid readers
Lost Words
Inside an apartment building on the outskirts of Milan, the working-class residents gossip, quarrel, and conspire against each other. Viewed through the eyes of Chino, an impressionable thirteen-year-old boy whose mother is the doorwoman of the building, the world contained within these walls is tiny, hypocritical, and mean-spirited: a constant struggle. Chino finds escape in reading.One day, a new resident, Amelia Lynd, moves in and quickly becomes an unlikely companion and a formative influence on Chino. Ms. Lynd--an elderly, erudite British woman--comes to nurture his taste in literature, introduces him to the life of the mind, and offers a counterpoint to the only version of reality that he's known. On one level, Lost Words is an engrossing coming-of-age tale set in the seventies, when Italy was going through tumultuous social changes, and on another, it is a powerful meditation on language, literature, and culture.
Book Details
- Publisher: New Directions Publishing Corporation
- Publish Date: Jan 25th, 2016
- Pages: 224
- Language: English
- Edition: undefined - undefined
- Dimensions: 7.90in - 5.30in - 0.70in - 0.60lb
- EAN: 9780811224765
- Categories: • Literary• Psychological• Crime
About the Author
Gardini, Nicola: - Nicola Gardini lives in Oxford and Milan. Lost Words was awarded the Viareggio Prize and the Zerilli-Marimo/City of Rome Prize. A Fellow of Keble College, Oxford, Gardini teaches Italian literature.
Moore, Michael F.: - Michael F. Moore, chair of the PEN/Heim Translation Award, has recently translated Live Bait by Fabio Genovesi and Agostino by Alberto Moravia.
Praise for this book
Combining elements of comedy and tragedy, Gardini's novel is a call on today's Italy to know its own language, to speak with substance, and to reconsider the relationship between words and meaning--a relationship broken by mass culture. As Leopardi declares, there is in words an exhortation to probe the depths of truth--a calling to believe that culture and education can still save us.--from the citation for the Viareggio Prize
Gardini's language is forceful and refined.--Silvia Mazzocchi "La Repubblica"
A combative novel, a multilayered piece of fiction, a triumphant narrative mechanism.--Matteo Giancotti "Corriere Della Sera"
A gentle, bittersweet, tragicomic rite-of-passage novel translated into lively English by Moore.-- "Kirkus Reviews"