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Catalogo Francoforte_2015_Layout 1 08/10/2015 15:33 Pagina 1
DONZELLI EDITORE
Via Mentana, 2b
00185 Roma
tel. +39 06 4440600
fax +39 06 4440607
www.donzelli.it
Foreign rights
Elena Munafò
[email protected]
Illustrated by
Fabian Negrin
Italian translation by
Bianca Lazzaro
fairy tales
2
2015
Hardcover, pp. 420
LETTERIO DI FRANCIA (1877-1940), professor of Literature, was an
anthropologist and scholar of Italian folkolre. During the 20s, he collected
the traditional popular fairy tales of his region in the book Fiabe e novelle
calabresi, published in 1929 and then in 1935.
BIANCA LAZZARO editor and translator, is the Director of Donzelli’s fiction series. Beside her works on dialect, she translated several contempoary and classical authors.
FABIAN NEGRIN is illustrator, graphic designer and cartoonist. He has
earnt the most prestigious international awards, like the Bologna Ragazzi
Award in 2010.
Fairy-tales made of mint and wind, sugar and flour. Hand-kneaded kinglets. Little ricotta-skinned queens. Silvery-green, fully fey
and enchanted olive groves, where characters with unusual and
suggestive names meet and lose themselves – Palmerino and
Golden Hen, the Seven-gowned Bella and hairy Betta, Rotilio and
Marcavallo; but tales of protagonists who are more familiar to
fairy-tale lovers are interwoven next to theirs – Petrosinella or
Tredicino, and particularly a whirlwind of furious male and female dragons, pupas and talking birds, magical fountains, bewitched
orchards, old hags, sirens and devils, fairy lanterns, walnuts, hazelnuts, chestnuts and eggs whence mountains, rivers, palaces and
castles come forth, encrusted with precious stones…
Once upon a time there was the toe of the boot, the furthest end
of Italian peninsula, which has jealously preserved 61 fairy-tales
like a coffer for almost a century, arriving from far away to take
root among the orange-groves, among the cicadas and the orange-blossoms, enclosed by two seas teeming with stories, in the
shadows of shady mountains.
And it is utterly amazing to find them now, intact, in their captivating and capricious reshuffling of echoes from One thousand and
one nights no less than stories about the paladins, or ones by the
Grimms, by Pitrè, by Perrault and all the best of fairy-tale and folk
tradition. To say it with Calvino, they are fairy-tales «packed with
original and rare motifs», which the dialect in which they have
been passed down snatched away from spreading and being popular with small and adult readers alike. For the first time availabe in
Italian, with the original illustration by Fabian Negrin, these fairy
tales are ready to conquer readers of all ages, all over the world.
All rights Donzelli editore
www.donzelli.it
3
fairy tales
First Italian translation ever
Letterio di Francia
KING PEPPER AND THE MAGIC WIND
Bianca Lazzaro
fairy tales
4
2015
Paperback, pp. 96
GIAMBATTISTA BASILE was born in Giugliano in Campania, around 1566,
in a family of courtiers and artists. After leaving his hometown, he wandered about the courts in Italy, serving as a soldier in armies and on the
Republic of Venice vessels. Once back in the Kingdom of Naples, he held
various administrative posts in the provinces around Naples, and died in
1632.
Giambattista Basile
THREE TALES FROM The Tale of Tales
Matteo Garrone drew his film Tale of Tales from these three stories, The Flea, The Hind and The Flayed Crone: the time was ripe for
Basile’s work to reach mainstream cinema. The suggestion of
these characters, places and stories of this veritable treasure trove
of storytelling art is too intense, in the way it cast its beams of
light beyond the 17th century Neapolitan court onto all kinds of
fairy-tales and novella throughout the following centuries. Basile’s
genius conceived its narrative construction as a tale about tales,
embedding 50 fantasy stories within a story-frame and choosing
the Neapolitan language to give a voice to the colourful and outrageous kaleidoscope of his tales. The result, as Benedetto Croce
decreed a century ago, is that «Italy possesses the oldest, richest
and most artistic of all folk-tale books, in Basile’s Cunto de li cunti».
At the dawn of the third millennium, Garrone has transposed the
phantasmagorical explosion and dreamlike allure of these stories
into cinema. His film is built around the three fairy-tales which are
being proposed here, being but a sample of the fifty ones in total.
Three bold and compelling stories, unravelling the theme of passions – from love to friendship, from envy to seduction – along
the lines of the grotesque and of disquiet, of the comical and of
repulsion, of licentiousness and scurrility, of drama and faery. Is
Basile at the roots of modern fantasy? Nothing is better for finding out than reading these three tales, which are now available to
be translated into other modern languages, thanks to Bianca
Lazzaro’s translation into modern Italian.
All rights on the edition: Donzelli editore
www.donzelli.it
5
fairy tales
From these stories, Garrone’s major film
with Salma Hayek and Vincent Cassel
illustrated by
Fabian Negrin
fairy tales
6
2015 - Forthcoming
Hardcover, pp. 650
JACOB (1785 – 1863) & WILHELM (1786 – 1859) GRIMM collected, edited
and published in their Kinderund Hausmärchen the folk stories and fairy tales
of the German tradition.
FABIAN NEGRIN was born in Argentina in 1963. At the age of 18, having
escaped from its dictatorship, he began his career as an illustrator, graphic
designer and cartoonist. In 1989 he moved to Milan, dedicating himself to
books for children. He began to earn the most prestigious international
awards, among them the Unicef prize; the Andersen prize as best illustrator
in 2000; the Bib Plaque in 2009; and the Bologna Ragazzi Award in 2010.
Illustrations rights: Donzelli editore
Jacob & Wilhelm Grimm
THE ORIGINAL FOLK AND FAIRY TALES
When the Brothers Grimm first published their volumes of FairyTales between 1812 and 1815, they never imagined that stories
like Little Red Riding Hood, or Hansel and Gretel would become the
most celebrated ones worldwide. Yet, almost nobody today is
aware of the stories included in the two first volumes, because
during the next forty years the two brothers gave life to a business
that churned out six further editions, each of them different in
content and style. Finally now and for the first time, readers can
read the original version of the 156 stories, with which the
Grimms gave birth to their collection 200 years ago, all together:
from The Frog Prince to the Golden Key, going by Cinderella and Snow
White, and a host of other characters, enchantments, magic
objects, and magical animals. The Grimms throw a whole world
open before our eyes, spawned by imagination and oral tradition,
passed on for centuries mouth-to-mouth, and set on paper for the
first time. It is thus, with this collection, that they gave birth to the
world of fairy-tales as we know it today. These are the tales
through which they created a trove of imagery that has been revisited and reworked a thousand times since then, from Walt Disney
to fantasy. Two centuries later, it is time to return to where it all
began, and our surprise will be even bigger, because of the discovery that not all of the fairy-tales we are most familiar with really
used to be as we know them, some of them were even more compelling, some others were even more cruel, while some other
wonderful one was slipped into a drawer by the Grimms and never
republished. They are all here now, for the first time outside
Germany, to international readers. These unknown delicacies will
be depicted by paintbrushes through the drawings of a truly
favourite artist like Fabian Negrin, who is thus continuing his great
fresco on fairy-tale classics. What face will Negrin give to this Little
Red Riding Hood, who emerged from the Grimms’ pen two hundred years ago? And to Hansel and Gretel? And to their witch?
www.donzelli.it
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fairy tales
For the first time,
all the Unknown fairy-tales
Luigi Capuana
THE COMPLETE FAIRY TALES
fairy tales
8
2015
Hardcover, pp. 600
LUIGI CAPUANA (1839-1915) was a writer, a journalist and a scholar of
Verism. Along with his career as an active intellectual, he wrote fairy-tales
during his whole life.
LUCIA SCUDERI lives and works in Catania. She writes and illustrates children books for several publishing house, in Italy and abroad. Among the
many awards she received is the Andersen Prize in 2013 as «Miglior illustratrice».
The great «Fairy-tales and stories» Donzelli series opened 2015
with another cornerstone of Italian story-telling, the unabridged
collection of Luigi Capuana’s fairy-tales. Following an absence of
decades from bookshelves, and for the first time in a complete
edition, lavishly illustrated by one of Italian most acclaimed illustrators, Capuana’s fairy-tales are back on the scene for the celebration of the author’s centenary. A son of that same century of
great fairy-tale collectors and writers like the Grimms, Pitrè and
Andersen, Capuana had a totally original attitude towards fairytales. He drew themes and characters from a large heritage of
folk-tales, which he then elaborated anew, completely according
to his own imagination and creativity. On a par with Andersen,
Capuana thus moulded his repertoire of over seventy fairy-tales
around the heat of his literary inspiration, but his chief uniqueness was his writing such tales purposely for children. We owe the
levity and playfulness of a great part of his fairy-tales to this, as
they abound with refrains, rhymes, singsong and twists in the
form of linguistic creativity, and remain up to our times among
the loveliest and dreamiest stories within all national repertoires.
I deem few authors, awaiting
the public’s verdict, have trembled
as I have, before
those lively wee heads
hanging on my words.
Luigi Capuana (1882)
www.donzelli.it
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fairy tales
illustrated by
Lucia Scuderi
L. Frank Baum
THE STORY OF THE MAGIC CLOAK
fairy tales
10
2015
Hardcover, pp. 140
L. FRANK BAUM (1856-1919) was an American author chiefly known for
his children’s books, particularly The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. He wrote 13
novel sequels, 9 other fantasy novels, and a host of other works.
AURELIA FRONTY was born in Paris in 1973. She works with some of the
main French publishing houses, as Gallimard, Seuil and Hachette Jeunesse,
and with prominent writers. Her works are shown in several exhibitions all
over the world. For Donzelli, she illustrated The Nutcracker (2011) in the two
versions by Dumas and Hoffmann.
On the borders of the Marvelous Land of Oz, Lulea the fairy
Queen is dancing in a circle with her fairy handmaidens, on a
night of full moon, in a forest-glade in Noland: «I am tired of
dancing, my dears, I should like to find something more diverting
to do. Why do we not try to create something with our magical
powers? A cloak for instance…». Thus begins the story L. Frank
Baum considered his best creation, even better than the Wizard of
Oz. A novel which is at the origins of the best American fantasy
and which «is, among the tales I have written, the one that most
of all follows in the footsteps of the loveliest erstwhile fairy-tales»
in the words of Baum himself. Not to talk about the footsteps of
Oz. If Dorothy was wandering around there in his Marvelous
Land, the protagonist of these pages is also a child, or rather two
of them, Bud and his sister Fluff. Thanks to that magical cloak
belonging to the fairies − which has the gift of granting its owner’s wishes − , and to a series of adventurous circumstances, one
of them finds himself on the throne and the other, a princess of
Noland, complete with a court, counsellors and subjects. But the
evil Queen Zixi of Ix is interested in the cloak too...The Fairy
Lulea will return in the end, to retrieve the cloak that caused so
much harm, but in the meantime Bud and Fluff will have discovered a lot of wonderful things, which nobody will be able to take
away from them any more. Exactly what happened to Dorothy in
the Marvelous Land of Oz.
Originally published in 1905, this work has never been published
in Italy and appears today for the first time, in a beautiful edition
with illustrations purposely created by Aurélia Fronty.
www.donzelli.it
11
fairy tales
illustrated by
Aurelia Fronty
Hans Christian Andersen
TALES AND STORIES
fairy tales
12
2014
Hardcover, pp. 314
HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN (1805-1875), was a prolific writer of plays,
travelogues, novels and poems, but he is best remembered for his fairytales, which transcend time, age and nationality.
FABIAN NEGRIN was born in Argentina in 1963. At the age of 18, having
escaped from its dictatorship, he began his career as an illustrator, graphic
designer and cartoonist. In 1989 he moved to Milan, dedicating himself to
books for children. He began to earn the most prestigious international
awards, among them the Unicef prize; the Andersen prize as best illustrator
in 2000; the Bib Plaque in 2009; and the Bologna Ragazzi Award in 2010.
Rights sold to Livraria Martins Fontes (Brazil)
Andersen’s tales make up a narrative corpus without par for
power and widespread diffusion within Western cultures.
Composed and published in Danish between 1835 and 1874 – the
same years in which the Grimms were churning out a good 7
ed’tions of their Children’s and Household Tales and Pitrè was collecting his 300 tales from peasants in faraway Sicily – they spring
mostly from the author’s original imagination and only in a smaller part from folk material, even though, at least initially, he declared this had inspired him. The fact is that Andersen did not limit
himself to retrace and reinterpret the thread of the great
European fairy-tale tradition, inaugurated by Basile, fixed by
Perrault and further structured by Hoffman. Provided with a
restless romantic tension and with an authentic bourgeois awareness, Andersen radically changed the fairy-tale perspective. Before
him, magicians, witches, gnomes, dragons, fairies and giants were
figures endowed with special powers, by impenetrable, mysterious
wisdom, unknown to the reader. Andersen, on the contrary, creates a sort of humanisation of animals and things and often
immerses himself as well into the creatures he invents, sometimes
becoming a fir-tree, a piggy-bank, a snail, or a teapot. The secret
of his worldwide success stems from here: inventing unreal figures, and then placing them at once into the real world, into the
everyday life of passions and impulses. «The tales were in my
mind like a seed – he would say about himself at the end of his
career as a writer – it just needed a breath of wind, a ray of sunshine, a drop of bitter herbs, and they would blossom». Following
its first success in 2001, renewed in 2005 for the occasion of
Andersen’s birth bicentenary, the Donzelli edition is back again to
recapture that «breath of wind» and that «ray of sunshine», thanks
to the talent of one of the top contemporary illustrators, Fabian
Negrin.
www.donzelli.it
13
fairy tales
illustrated by
Fabian Negrin
Giuseppe Pitrè
THE ENCHANTED WELL
Bianca Lazzaro
fairy tales
14
2013
Hardcover, pp. 830
GIUSEPPE PITRÈ (1841–1916) was a physician, a historian, a philologist
and author. Considered the founder of folklore science in Italy, Pitrè collected and set down in writing tales from the Sicilian popular tradition.
JACK ZIPES, an internationally famed expert, is the author of dozens of
studies on fairy-tales, as well as being translator and curator of collections
fairy-tales essential collections.
FABIAN NEGRIN is illustrator, graphic designer and cartoonist. He has earnt
the most prestigious international awards, like the Bologna Ragazzi Award
in 2010.
«Collections of fairy tales in dialect are not to be found easily, but
I hope my book may stimulate some reader to search for them
and maybe even prompt some publisher to reprint them» – thus
wrote Calvino in the introduction to his Fiabe italiane. It was 1956:
more than half a century later, Donzelli has proudly picked up
Calvino’s baton and for the first time has translated into Italian
the collection published in 1875, which Calvino himself defined
«the optimum of the art of storytelling». It is the richest and most
extensive repertoire known in Italy and in Europe and it is not by
chance that Calvino drew a good 39 of his 200 Italian tales from
it.This repertoire has remained totally unknown up to our days. In
fact, in his philological precision, Pitrè had written down the tales
in the 19th century Sicilian dialect in which he had heard them,
and in doing this he made them incomprehensible for Italian readers and even more so for foreign ones. Almost a century and a
half later, this edition, introduced by the top international fairytale scholar Jack Zipes and illustrated by Fabian Negrin’s talent, is
the first integral translation into modern Italian of Pitrè’s 300
tales. The translation by Bianca Lazzaro faithfully renders into
today’s speech all the expressive wealth of an ancient dialect language and unveils a peerless imaginary world to adult and children
readers. An unmistakeably Mediterranean storytelling full of
colours, scents, sounds, gestures, rhythms – tasting of saffron,
olive oil, bread, grape-must; amongst gardens full of oranges and
figs, pomegranates and grapes, and a countryside inhabited by
cunning animals like a storyteller parrot or like a donkey excreting
money. And then trapdoors, secret passages and wells for entering
other worlds…
www.donzelli.it
15
fairy tales
illustrated by
Fabian Negrin
Alexandre Dumas
THE THREE MUSKETEERS
fiction
16
2014 - Forthcoming
Hardcover, pp. 600
ALEXANDRE DUMAS (1802 - 1870) was a French writer, best known for his
historical novels of high adventure which have made him one of the most
widely read authors in the world.
FEDERICO MAGGIONI is one of the most important Italian illustrators.
Awarded with the Andersen Prize twice (in 1986 and 2007), Maggioni was also
mentioned at the Bologna Ragazzi Award in 2007. Among the classics he has
illustrated are: A. Manzoni, I promessi sposi (2006), I. Calvino, Il cavaliere inesistente
(2006). He illustrated for Donzelli Zweig’s 24 hours in a Woman’s life (2013), sold
to Livraria Martins Fontes, Brazil.
What is the secret? Where is the magic? Maybe is it in the plot?
Perhaps is it in the suspense, or in the joy of the storytelling? Sure,
it is its narrative seduction that makes the Three Musketeers a
forefather of the Novel as a genre. This masterpiece of the plot
catches the reader in every page, leaving him astonished and
deceived, or instead making him an accomplice, leading him to a
stunning surprise effect. Starting from the title: not only the Three
Musketeers are actually four, but the novel is most of all the story of
“the fourth”, that D’Artagnan who is the real protagonist not only
of this book, but also of the further two volumes of the trilogy:
Twenty years after and The Viscount of Bragelonne. «Consider a 18years-old Don Quixote»: so Dumas presents D’Artagnan, at the
beginning of the novel. The story develops around this character,
naïve and strong, gentle and brave, but also loyal and devoted to
the Crown: the three novels are the story of his life. And together
with him, the other crucial presence, as an antagonist, is that of
Milady de Winter, quintessence of the deception, erotic symbol of
malice, wickedness and betrayal, that she brings as a physical mark
on her body. Milady is the origin of all the poison drops which are
instilled in the rounds of the story…And what about the other
three, the musketeers? Athos, Porthos and Aramis are not at all
minor characters. They give shape, together with the Cardinal
Richelieu, Louis of France and Queen Anne, to a wonderful coral
novel, able to move and touch people of every time, all over the
world. This new edition, with more than 70 original drawings by
Federico Maggioni, is dedicated to the readers of every ages, both
to the neophytes and to the admirers of Dumas. To those who
have read this masterpiece when they were young and to those who
have never read it, maybe considering it “only” a novel for teenagers.
www.donzelli.it
17
fiction
illustrated by
Federico Maggioni
Alexandre Dumas
TWENTY YEARS AFTER
alexandre dumas
venti anni dopo
con una introduzione
e un dizionario dei personaggi di
claude schopp
illustrazioni di
federico maggioni
traduzione di
camilla diez
fiction
18
2015 - Forthcoming
Hardcover, pp. 700
Donzelli
«Il romanzo dell’età matura:
età del disincanto, del cinismo e dei compromessi;
età della nostalgia, dell’ambizione sociale, della tenerezza»
Claude Schopp
Twenty years have passed since the «dark and stormy night»
which ended the story of the Three Musketeers in such a tragic and
fatal way. Since then, the four friends completely lost their customary life in common, which had united them so much. They fully
became men in a historical context which had changed deeply.
What combination of events, what irresistible attraction, what
desire, which destiny would bring them together again? An absolute emblem of a sequel, played out with a monstrous ability to
evoke and to upset, to close the narrative circle only to reopen it
with a sudden new twist, Twenty years after not only maintains the
previous novel’s thrilling storytelling, but possibly takes it to an
even more successful literary result. In fact, as Claude Schopp
noted acutely, «Twenty years after is a novel of maturity, about sentimental disillusionment, cynicism and compromises».
In this edition, thanks to the illustrations by Federico Maggioni,
Dumas’ characters come to life, emerging from the shadow and
returning as protagonists into the readers’ limelight.
ALEXANDRE DUMAS (1802 - 1870) was a French writer, best known for his
historical novels of high adventure which have made him one of the most
widely read authors in the world.
FEDERICO MAGGIONI is one of the most important Italian illustrators.
Awarded with the Andersen Prize twice (in 1986 and 2007), Maggioni was also
mentioned at the Bologna Ragazzi Award in 2007. Among the classics he has
illustrated are: A. Manzoni, I promessi sposi (2006), I. Calvino, Il cavaliere inesistente
(2006). He illustrated for Donzelli Zweig’s 24 hours in a Woman’s life (2013), sold
to Livraria Martins Fontes, Brazil, and Dumas’ The Three Musketeers.
www.donzelli.it
19
fiction
illustrated by
Federico Maggioni
Alessandro Portelli
BADLANDS
Bruce Springsteen and the American Dream
2015
Paperback, pp. 220
ALESSANDRO PORTELLI historian, expert on oral history, literary critic and
story-teller, taught American Literature at the University of Rome for
several years. He worked as advisor to the Mayor of Rome for the
preservation of Historical memory. Among his titles are: L’ordine è già stato
eseguito (sold to US, México and Finland), America profonda, Storie orali, Acciai
speciali and Canoni americani.
English text available.
www.donzelli.it
21
music & literature
music & literature
20
If there is a book that Springsteen’s folk have been expecting for
years, it is the one signed by a very special fan, Sandro Portelli,
a most original and tireless explorer of America and its deep
cultural roots. Sliding from music to literature, from history to
the present, Portelli places his well-tested storytelling at the
service of the singer of his most beloved America, the one all
founded on work, an America in which the promise of social
mobility and self-achievement is often frustrated and betrayed.
Rereading texts which Portelli knows how to anchor firmly to
the cultural and historical contexts, the book looks at
Springsteen’s world under the lens of work: jobs that devour the
lives of his characters and his job, as a musician and showbiz
man. The Springsteen depicted in this book is the one who
recounts lives second-hand, like the used Cadillacs on which his
heroes escape the tedium of repetitive daily drudge with no way
out; who sings the anger of those who rebel and who dream of
rebelling; who gives a voice to that sense of betrayal of those
who believe that being born in the United States authorises
them to expect something better; who warns that the phantom
of revolt is coming back to haunt the streets of an America in
the throes of a crisis. But Portelli’s Springsteen is also the one
who tells his painful stories with an overwhelming sound, which
evokes pride, in spite of everything, in being still alive. In the last
instance, the content of the dream is not what counts, and
neither is the possibility of the dream coming true; rather, what
counts is being able to dream, and the dignity of those who
dream. And the first one to dream along the Boss’ notes is
Portelli himself, who tells us about him page after page live,
through the vivid snapshots of live concerts, which he has been
attending for thirty years as an untiring fan.
Roberto De Gaetano and Bruno Roberti (ed. by)
TONI SERVILLO. BEYOND THE ACTOR
a cura di Roberto De Gaetano
e Bruno Roberti
TONI SERVILLO
Oltre l’attore
cinema
22
2015
Paperback, pp. 300
DONZELLI EDITORE
ROBERTO DE GAETANO is Professor of Film Studies at the University of
Calabria. He has dedicated important studies to the links between cinema
and philosophy, to current cinema and to authors and formats in Italian
cinema. He published: Il visibile cinematografico; La potenza delle immagini,
L’immagine contemporanea, Il corpo e la maschera, Nanni Moretti-
BRUNO ROBERTI is an associate Professor of Film Production and Film
Analysis at the University of Calabria. Among his recent publications
Manoel de Oliveira; Cinema Alchimia Uno; Morfologia dell’Iguana. Anna Maria
Ortese tra letteratura e cinema; L’Arte di Eduardo. Le forme e i linguaggi.
«It is my belief that a great dramatic text is structured like a
device, a bomb. We must find a way to light the fuse and make
it explode». And Toni Servillo truly seems to have found such a
way. Servillo – the star of Paolo Sorrentino’s film The great beauty - has left his mark on current times with his work as a film
actor, and not just in Italy. As a theatre director, Servillo has
reworked the tradition of Italian and European comedy and the
comic mask (Molière, Marivaux, Goldoni and De Filippo), projecting Neapolitan play traditions into a national and international context. The book opens with a presentation by Servillo,
who talks about himself and questions the actor’s role: a vivid
reflection on one’s relationship with the public and the text. To
follow, there are contributions by scholars, intellectuals and critics, modulated over three dialogue formats: wide-scope essays
criss-crossing all of Servillo’s art, from its inception to his most
recent successes; reading plays and films; portraits by who has
followed his career closely. These pages thus translate into a tribute to a great artist, who has managed from time to time to capture, move and amuse audiences through fiction, speech and
facial expressions, wearing a mask that is always different. His
endless performances on human existence allow us to capture
its true essence, communicating something powerful to us,
which arrives suddenly and surprisingly. It is the extraordinary
power the theatre and cinema possess to throw a bridge between
stories and life.
www.donzelli.it
23
cinema
With an original essay by
Toni Servillo
Conversations with
Cinema great
protagonists
,
L’avventura del cinema
a cura di
Mario Sesti
Testi di
Gianni Canova
Domenico Starnone
Carlo Verdone
donzelli
cinema
24
virgola
2015 - Forthcoming
Paperback, pp. 250
S
MARIO SESTI, a curator and founder of the Rome Film Festival, was director of the Taormina Film Festival from 2012 to 2014 and is currently the
curator of the Monicelli Award in Grosseto. His documentary films have
been screened at major Italian and international festivals. A film critic of
«L’Espresso», he teaches at the DAMS in Rome.
Mario Sesti (ed. by)
THE ADVENTURES OF CINEMA
As the most popular fantasy in the modern age, the only one able
to speak to the entire planet, film has been a perfect mould for
bodies and desires, the smouldering melting point between image
and imagination: and it is still difficult today to find a language
other than a movie’s images and sounds, in order to communicate, narrate, move, surprise and provoke, online or on the smallest
one of the endless screens we surround ourselves with, for creating worlds or for recording reality.
In this book, the most famous faces within international stardom,
from Meryl Streep to Al Pacino and Sean Connery, from Valeria
Golino to Toni Servillo, and camera masters from Lynch to
Malick, to Wenders and Herzog, talk about themselves and their
relationship with cinema. These conversations, which were born
from meetings at the Rome Film Festival, lead the reader right to
the core of the seventh Art, through the stories that gave birth to
the films of our lives. At the same time, while the protagonists’
words range through experiences, anecdotes, thoughts and varied
tales, all of them always seem to return to the same question: art,
craft or magic, what is this wonderful thing? What is cinema?
www.donzelli.it
25
cinema
Microstoria di una icona
della modernità
Carlo Olmo e Susanna Caccia
LE CORBUSIER
E LA VILLA SAVOYE
architecture
26
2016 - Forthcoming
Hardcover, pp. 250
DONZELLI EDITORE
CARLO OLMO has been the Head of the Architecture Department at the
Politecnico of Turin for several years. A scholar of History of
Architecture, he is one of the leading experts on Le Corbusier, in Italy and
abroad. With Donzelli he published Architettura e storia and Architettura e
novecento.
SUSANNA CACCIA researcher in Technology and Management of Cultural
Heritage, is Professor of Architectural Restoration at the University of
Florence. Since 2010, she is Adjunct professor at the Faculty of
Architecture of rhe Xi’an Jiaotong University (China).
Carlo Olmo & Susanna Caccia
LE CORBUSIER AND THE VILLAS SAVOYE
This is a study of the microhistory of Villas Savoye from its
genesis to nowadays. In the construction site of microhistory the
reduced scale of observation is the space which may permit the
reconstruction of interpersonal relationships as a historical
subject and to experiment with new procedures and put
interpretative categories to the test. The book also focuses on the
trasformations and restorations of the villa during the decades,
expecially analyzing some unpublished materials such as drawings,
letters and original photographies .
The problem regarding the construction defects is more or less a
constant in the work of Le Corbusier, in addition to the speed of
the processes of both ageing and decay which are characteristic
of the materials used in modern architecture. In this sense the
restoration of the works of Le Corbusier is also an opportunity
to bring back to the center of the critical and theoretical
discussion crucial topics regarding the reflection on modern
architecture: originality and authorship. As the book demonstrates
the restorations, such as the ones undertaken for Villas Savoye,
reopened the discussion on the topic of the restoration of an
auteur architecture, beginning from its foundations.
www.donzelli.it
27
architecture
A documented and illustrated history of
the Monument of Modernity
Del buono
e del cattivo uso dei
Bronzi di Riace
donzelli
current affairs
28
2015 - Forthcoming
Paperback, pp. 300
virgola
SALVATORE SETTIS, Director of the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa,
taught History of Art and Classical Archaeology. He published Laocoonte.
Fama e stile with Donzelli (translated into Spanish by Vaso Roto).
MAURIZIO PAOLETTI, teaches History of Ancient Art at the University of
Calabria. An archaeologist and classical archaeology scholar, he has conducted important excavations in central and southern Italy and in Europe. He
worked in cooperation with local and national institutions as a scientific consultant for museum-hosting and the enhancement of Italian archaeological
and cultural heritage.
ON THE GOOD AND BAD
USE OF THE RIACE BRONZES
These bronzes, discovered in 1972 off the coast of Calabria,
represent a noble and sublime example of that «looting of the
past» which takes place before our very eyes, in which we are not
only the spectators, but, increasingly more often, also the actors
and unaware protagonists. After the comics, advertisements and
tourist commercials, the Bronzes’ success in the media needs to
be viewed from a new perspective. The essays collected in this
volume blend irony and bitter reflections on such an exemplary
case-study, offering a few suggestions about how to enhance
these two famed and extremely rare Greek original statues in
bronze from the 5th century BC, the pride of the National
Archaeological Museum in Reggio Calabria.
The first misuse of the Riace Bronzes was made by
archaeologists, who did not demonstrate a willingness to talk
with audiences who were eager to share their specialist
knowledge of great ancient art. Then the failure on the part of
national and local institutions, which have been unable to make
courageous decisions, is equally serious, inasmuch they are ready
instead to exploit the Bronzes’ “celebrity” for rather dubious
purposes. In this volume, Settis and Paoletti tackle the issue
along with figureheads from different countries and from
different fields (archaeologists, journalists, historians, politicians,
etc.), in its most relevant aspects: from the true or alleged
identity of the Bronzes, to the sensitive management of the
statues at the Museum of Reggio Calabria, to the fictitious
“Calabrian nationality” of the statues, to the transformation of
the statues into true pop icons. This book forcefully brings to the
surface how fundamentally central the institutions are, as well as
the opinion that a good and bad use of the Bronzes is, first of
all, a cultural issue.
www.donzelli.it
29
current affairs
,
Salvatore Settis
Maurizio Paoletti
Salvatore Settis and Maurizio Paoletti (ed. by)
Alessandra Oddi Baglioni
BURRI IN BACKLIGHT
art & literature
30
2015
Paperback, pp. 150
ALESSANDRA ODDI BAGLIONI is a scholar and a lover of art. Born in
Umbria, she is the heir of two ancient families from Perugia who were very
important in the Middle Age. Her field of study is the historical and artistic heritage of her land.
If there is a contemporary Italian artist celebrated worldwide, this
is no doubt Alberto Burri. From the Centre Pompidou in Paris to
the Guggenheim in New York, passing through London, Los
Angeles, Lisbon and Madrid, there is no large museum in the
world that has not dedicated space and internationally prestigious
anthological showcases to him. His cretti – the gigantic artworks
in earths and vinyls – stand out from Gibellina to Los Angeles,
and his cellotex is by now an essential term in the contemporary
art lexicon. Who is less well-known is the private Burri, the gruff
doctor from Umbria, who left for the war in Africa, and found
himself catapulted into a POW camp in the Texas desert, and
who discovered his talent as a painter thanks to the cardboard and
paintbrushes he was given as a present by a farsighted corporal in
the American army. Alessandra Oddi Baglioni’s tale starts from
those struggling days in the American West, going on to his initial
steps as an artist on returning to Italy after the war, reconstructing
the intimate side of Burri, through private letters and the testimonials and memories of many of those who knew him. His
friends, and then his female friends, the women who went
through his life, with his wife Minsa. All of them immortalised by
Burri with the lens of one of his 30 cameras – another lifetime
passion, which remained unknown until now and is being revealed for the first time in this book, which is reproducing the private photos he took of his most intimate friends.
Rights sold to: Livraria Martins Fontes (Brazil)
www.donzelli.it
31
art & literature
with 8 original
photographs by
Alberto Burri
An Artist Life
Pierluigi Ridolfi
THE RENAISSANCE AT TABLE
R
Pierluigi Ridolfi
RINASCIMENTO A TAVOLA
La cucina e il banchetto nelle corti italiane
food & history
32
2015
Hardcover, pp. 270
DONZELLI EDITORE
PIERLUIGI RIDOLFI, born in Ferrara in 1934, a civil engineer and Professor
at Bologna University, has been one of the protagonists of Italian IBM. He
is the president of the Friends of the Lincei Academy Association. A longtime lover of good cuisine and a history of gastronomy buff, he is collating
the results of his research on these subjects for the first time in this book.
Eating well and being capable of sitting at table is an art. And it
has perhaps never reached the extraordinary heights it did in the
Renaissance. During that period, a banquet was not in fact simply
a “scenographic staging”, but it also embodied a profound
essence, a way of being for those lords and their courts, which
was expressed through the magnificence of the art of gourmet
eating. In this book, the history of sumptuous banquets that
would achieve fame, organised for popes and emperors, or dukes
and duchesses, ties into the description of elaborate and amazing
dishes. We become familiar with the prestigious names of great
chefs, real “stars” of the table. Through his careful perusal of
documents and aided by an extensive collection of illustrations,
Ridolfi introduces us to the culinary and convivial customs of that
time: from offal-based dishes where nothing is wasted to recipes
in which the sweet and savoury blend in the most unthinkable
manner, from themed banquets to dinners with dozens of
courses, to the point of raising doubts about the diners’ stomachs
being able to cope with those abnormal amounts of such
demanding foods... Embarking on this itinerary into the
magnificent halls of princely palaces where banqueting shows
were staged, wandering into the large kitchens teeming with cooks
and scullions, crammed with weird, ingenious tools for grinding
and roasting, is the best way to relive the atmosphere of Italian
Renaissance courts and breathe in the scents of an age marked by
the splendour of those great dynasties.
www.donzelli.it
33
food & history
with 32 pages of
illustrations in colors
Vito Teti
A HISTORY OF CHILLY
food & history
34
2015
Paperback, pp. 400
VITO TETI teaches Ethnology at University of Calabria, where he directs the
Center of Anthropologies and Literatures of the Mediterranean. Donzelli
published his fortunate essay Il senso dei luoghi that has had three editions since
2004. He also wrote the volume Storia dell’acqua (2003).
There is no more «global» flavouring than chilly: Christopher
Columbus, who departed to rediscover the Indies of ancient spices,
discovered the Americas of chilli instead; from that moment, this
new king of spicy flavours has never stopped travelling far and wide
throughout the five continents. It is difficult, nowadays, to find a
place in the world where it is not present. At the same time, a spice
that is more «local», more geographically characterised, more linked
to the identity of places than chilli, does not exist. Due to one of
those fascinating paradoxes in the history and culture of taste, chilli
has ended up by choosing a few elective locations of residence in the
course of its interminable journeys. To the extent that these
locations would no longer be able to distance themselves from it.
Amongst the lands where it disembarked buoyantly, forcefully
winning an undisputable hegemony, there is one which has made it
its banner; at the centre of the Mediterranean, in the heart of our
South, Calabria has actually identified with it, in the course of a
symbiosis spanning several centuries, with its real or presumed
properties: tempting, erotic, sweet enough to swoon for, bitter
enough to weep for. Perfect, in any case, for telling its story. The
material story and the symbolical one. The one about recipes and the
one about rather hallucinating dreams, through which identities get
lost and are born anew, without taking things too seriously, as is
proper and fitting woven in this book.
www.donzelli.it
35
food & history
with 85 Author’s
Recipes
Food, Metaphors, Identities, Cultures
Paolo De Castro
THE FOOD CHALLENGE IN GLOBAL WORLD
Paolo De Castro
CIBO
La sfida globale
Prefazione di Matteo Renzi
current affairs
36
2015
Paperback, pp. 175
Saggine
DONZELLI EDITORE
PAOLO DE CASTRO is a politician and former Italian Minister of
Agriculture, Food and Forestry Policies. In 2009 he was elected to the
European Parliament, and currently serves in the Committee on
Agriculture and Rural Development. Donzelli published his Corsa alla terra
(2012).
I
Abundance vs scarcity, hunger vs obesity, local vs global, genuine vs
industrial, tradition vs innovation. The debate on themes
concerning food has become sizzling, particularly in developed
countries, being criss-crossed by divisions which often seem to be
irreconcilable. A stance which does not aid an understanding of
the great changes taking place within the agricultural and food
global scenario, because it often gives precedence to a hunt for its
perpetrators over an analysis of its causes. But the challenges
surrounding it are not conventional at all, with the first one being
a certainty in supplies. The level of well-being attained by everbroader layers of worldwide population has contributed to limit
poverty areas, but nowadays it poses novel questions on the future
sustainability of the planet’s nourishment system. The main actors
in these growth processes are now among the new protagonists
of international politics and they are placing old balances and preeminences taken for granted under discussion, as new impulse is
sought for facing the great themes of global cohabitation as well
as climate mutations. At this crossroads, the debate on food
security needs to imagine novel paths. Good policies to be
translated into good practices are needed to ensure healthy and
sufficient food for humanity. In these pages, one of the top
European experts, christened Mister Expo by the media – due to
his appointment as a permanent mentor for Expo2015 by the
European Parliament Agriculture Commission – is suggesting a
way to exit disciplined, geographical and sometimes also
ideological barriers and look at food and agricultural production
in the only way that is sensible today. A global issue, to be dealt
with as such.
www.donzelli.it
37
current affairs
Preface by
Matteo Renzi
with more than 80
pictures and illustrations
in colors
history
38
2013
Hardcover, pp. 450
ANTONIO DE ROSSI is Professor of Architectural Desing at the Politecnico
of Turin and director of the Research Centre «Istituto di Architettura
Montana». He is vice-director of the Urban Center Metropolitano of Turin.
He has published, among other titles: Architettura alpina contemporanea (with
Roberto Dini, 2012), Architettura Alpina moderna in Piemonte e Valle d’Aosta
(2007) Atlante dei paesaggi corstuiti (2002).
Building Reality and Imagination
As paradoxical as it may seem at a first glance, the Alps have not
always existed as we know and perceive them nowadays. They
were “constructed”, by means of a twofold process: through
interaction with the Alpine territory, through the concrete
introduction of human artefacts into that context; and through
the construction of an Alpine mountain picture, of a
representation, a mise en scène of the Alps. Both aspects have had
and still have a history.
This work – dedicated in particular to the Western Alpine space
included between Italy, France and Switzerland – deals with this
theme itself: the transformation of mountain environment and
landscape in the period between the second half of the 18th
century, the moment of discovery of the Alps on the part of
European urban societies, and the definitive fixing of an idea of
the Alps linked to the tourist metamorphosis operated by the
Belle Époque in the early 20th century. Those are the 150 years in
which that Alpine picturesque stereotype takes root and gets
structured, and which we are still called to deal with today in many
instances, a century later. A physical history therefore, but also a
history of culture and ideas, that necessarily straddles the terrain
of multiple disciplines: landscape and landscaping theories,
tourism and mountaineering, the history of architecture and
infrastructures, art and literature, the history of settlements,
geology, economic and social history. In order to better follow
this complex concept, a sort of “summit itinerary” is being
proposed to show the existence of cultures and ways of seeing
things that goes beyond single national experiences, and draws a
long-term European perspective.
www.donzelli.it
39
history
PREMIO ACQUI STORIA 2015
Antonio De Rossi
HISTORY OF THE ALPS
history
40
2014
Hardcover, pp. 350
QUINTO ANTONELLI is head of the Popular Writings Archive at the
Historic Museum of Trentino, for which he has been the curator of the
«War writings» series, published together with the Historic War Museum of
Rovereto. He has collaborated with The Great War, the Utet work by curators Mario Isnenghi and Daniele Ceschin. He works on autobiographical
narrations by common people, education processes, and the history of
Twentieth century wars.
Grant available for the English translation
Letters, Diaries and Memories from the Front
This book is not for us. We are intruders, peeping today amongst
the soldiers’ letters and diaries. Indeed, their writing is part of intimate communications, reserved for the family circle. Whereas, in
writing to their family, educated officers also write somewhat for
posterity, he who writes these pages is mostly a subaltern soldier
with the only ambition of addressing his relatives, in order to safeguard a bridge of connections at a risk of being destroyed by the
conflict: «I beseech you to write to me soon, that you may enliven
me a bit, because my life in the trenches is worse than that of our
swine». It features extremely plentiful records, gathered at the
Historic Museum of Trentino, which have been excluded from
the tale of the war for a long time, inasmuch considered marginal,
where not even controversial: in fact, the authors are «all» the
Italians, even those from the Trentino, Julian and Trieste regions,
who were Austrian subjects a century ago. Their need for re-establishing their links with the family is sometimes threatened by
their incapability to comprehend: who is at home cannot grasp a
reality which cannot be described due to its very nature, and who
is at the front cannot conceive attitudes that appear disrespectful
or superficial: «You will understand that we are devoured by anger
over here, on hearing that there are festivities in Italy about
Gorizia being taken and that bells are being tolled, they ought to
be ashamed». The soldiers’ bitterness and anger are striking, and
it is understandable how easily war may have led them to madness:
the volume includes the War’s fools. Madness in trenches dvd, a documentary dedicated by Enrico Verra to soldiers stricken by psychoneuroses, locked in asylums and subjected to often cruel treatments. The phenomenon of those known as «war dimwits» is
probably only the tip of a more extensive disorder, of folly flowing deep down, which found one of its most terrifying expressions in that war.
www.donzelli.it
41
history
THE BRIDGE AWARD 2015
Quinto Antonelli
INTIMATE HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR
Angelo Ventrone
THE GREAT WAR AND THE 20TH CENTURY
2015
Paperback, pp. 288
ANGELO VENTRONE, teaches contemporary history at the University of
Macerata. A researcher of political cultures and social movements, he is the
author, among other things, of Vogliamo tutto. Perché due generazioni hanno
creduto nella rivoluzione. 1960-1988 (2012). With Donzelli he published Il
nemico interno (2005), Piccola storia della Grande Guerra (2005), La seduzione
totalitaria (2004).
www.donzelli.it
43
history
history
42
The First World War represents a real watershed in the 20th
century, with its unusual combination of war and technicality:
within a few years, an impressive number of inventions not only
radically changed lifestyles and social patterns, but also the
concept and practice of war itself. One killed from afar in the
Great War. Due to this, while it became more and more
commonplace to see people dying, at the same time it was more
and more difficult to see them actually being killed. It is in this
context that life on the front also changed, becoming
characterised by anguish about assaults to enemy trenches
protected by walls of barbed-wire and machine guns, by
unceasing bombing and by ruthless military discipline. Solidarity
between soldiers and officers was thus flanked by the drama of
mutinies and self-mutilation. But there was not only the utmost
front line. There were also the rear lines; there was the “homefront.” And there were all those who were quickly “forgotten” by
history: the civilians in border zones, the prisoners of war in
internment camps, the soldiers who were maimed or disfigured in
the fighting. Due to all this, the Great War, the first total war,
represented a real laboratory for the 20th century, which
accelerated the modernisation of European society on the one
hand, and brought forward certain elements on the other hand,
making totalitarian regimes, soon to be implemented, conceivable.
Since then, the face of the world has not been the same.
Mario Isnenghi
CONVERTING TO WAR
T
CONVERTIRSI
ALLA GUERRA
Liquidazioni, mobilitazioni e abiure
nell’Italia tra il 1914 e il 1918
Lo storico più autorevole sul tema più controverso
history
44
2015
Paperback, pp. 290
Perché e come una nazione intera
cambiò alleanze e diventò interventista
Saggine
DONZELLI EDITORE
MARIO ISNENGHI, Professor at the University of Venice, is one of Italy’s
most authoritative historians. Donzelli published his Dieci lezioni sull’Italia
contemporanea (2011) and Garibaldi fu ferito (2007) now at its 3rd reprint.
Between June 1914 and May 1915, Italy went through a
sensational reversal of its international alliances, which led to the
decision of declaring war upon Austria and Germany. It not only
featured a military, but also a political, cultural and ideal
reconversion, made of abdications, transfigurations, retractations
and every sort of abjuration. Italy’s morphing from being a
member of Franz Joseph’s triple alliance to its independence
tensions addressing the liberation of Trento and Trieste, brought
about a conversion of Germany’s image from model to antimodel; the eclipse of socialist internationalism and the
subsequent move towards nationalism in important sectors of
left-wing, republican and Mazzinian opinion; the transformation
of Catholics, from intransigent enemies of the State to clerical
patriots; the complete restructuring of inner balances within the
liberal ruling class. A historic passage from a society made up of
bigwigs towards mass society, was playing itself out during that
restless transition. Thus, the ten months of development from
entering the war went by fraught by a glaring dualism. On the one
hand, a new, tumultuous cauldron of minorities was advancing
upon the scene, a labyrinth of committees mobilised for war,
asserting its political hegemony by impeaching Parliament, and
becoming increasingly threatening against those declaring
themselves contrary to a war. On the other hand, a part of Italy
did continue to exist, perhaps as a majority in terms of numbers,
but it became increasingly feeble, voiceless and faded, increasingly
establishing its distance and non-involvement regarding political
activism. In the meantime, tri-coloured flags were igniting minds
and hearts..
www.donzelli.it
45
history
Mario Isnenghi
Emilio Franzina
THE (ALMOST TRUE) STORY
OF THE UNKNOWN SOLDIER
2013
Paperback, pp. 320
EMILIO FRANZINA teaches Contemporary History at the University of
Verona. A scholar of Social and Cultural History, with a specific focus on
19th and 20th centuries, he has worked on Italian emigration, especially to
South America, studying letters, diaries, memoires and official documents.
He edited for Donzelli the two volumes of Storia dell’emigrazione italiana.
Rights sold to Livraria Martins Fontes (Brazil)
www.donzelli.it
47
history
history
46
A historian by trade, a narrator by passion, Franzina treads through
these pages on a line between history and literature, and, drawing on
a myriad of documents from the 1914-18 period, he reconstructs an
imaginary biography of a soldier who died in the great war and was
never identified. Piecing together fragments of lives disseminated
throughout letters, autobiographies and official reports gathered in
years of research, the historian composes the likely history of a
soldier, which the narrator then tells, thus crossing throughout all the
stages of the war. After saving his skin and returning home as a hero
several times, his unknown soldier dies nameless, not in a battle, but
from enemy bombing in 1918 as he runs away from a brothel to save
a young girl who had fallen in love with him. Due to casual
circumstances his body would be buried at the Altar of the Nation
as an emblem and in remembrance of all the fallen during that
conflict. And it is exactly from this symbolic place that the Unknown
Soldier begins to retrace the history of his life in first person, after a
hundred years – an emblematic life, because thanks to historic
research and narrative conjectures, it adds up circumstances,
ambience and episodes known to a generation of Italians who ended
up at the front. But the existential scope of this soldier is also
completely original in other ways, because this Unknown Soldier
imagined by the author is an Italian born in Brazil who has never
been to Italy before 1915. Hurrying overseas upon the explosion of
war, due to his dedication to the homeland, he finds himself in a
trench in a trice; thanks to his experiences, readers will follow every
stage of the war, from the Carso to the Altar of the Nation, and
against any celebration rhetoric, the highly original and documented
narrative key chosen by Franzina smashes and multiplies the identity
of a single individual on the page which becomes, à la Pirandello,
one, none and, in the case of the great war, six-hundred thousand.
Salvatore Lupo
THE SOUTHERN QUESTION
2015
Paperback, pp. 220
SALVATORE LUPO is Professor of Contemporary History at the University
of Palermo. Among other titles, Donzelli published his Storia della mafia,
1993; 2004, translated into several languages) and Il fascismo (2000; 2005).
www.donzelli.it
49
history
history
48
When one talks of contemporary Italy, the “question” can only be
the southern one. And the question is such – this is what is usually
thought –, exactly because it is always the same one, exactly
because the Mezzogiorno has been motionless for 150, it has
“always been stuck there”. But is it truly so? And is the fact of
continuing to propose this question anew really aiding us to
actually understand the history? Indeed, although it is undeniable
that the South has lagged behind in many aspects, on the other
hand it really seems difficult not to see that in the meantime it has
also gone forward (compared to its past). In reality, when we
speak about a rift between North and South – as we have been
doing now for a century and a half – we are referring ourselves to
a composite concept, which includes different historic stages, and
which does not only touch on the sphere of economy, but also
concerns society, the public sphere, politics, mores. This new
book by Lupo tries to unravel the tangle, distinguishing at least
three historical and conceptual blocks harking back to differing
seasons. In the first season, which began around 1875, the
southern issue was the pivot of a greater social issue, which
concerned relations between the middle-class and the people. In
the second one, which developed between the 19th and 20th
centuries, it condensed a series of regional-centred protests by the
different southern diverse middle-classes. In the third season,
during the first republican era (1950-1970) it managed to support
a truly “extraordinary” series of public policies. Under closer
scrutiny, the “issue” was not born in any of these three cases from
an automatic mirroring of reality. In each one of the three, the
topics were elaborated with strongly subjective purposes. It means
that the issue about the south is not a single one; and even more,
that it ought not to be confused, nor can it coincide, with the
history of the Mezzogiorno. Which can emerge, in all its strength
and its ramifications, only of there is, paradoxically, enough
courage to enfranchise it from southerness.
Toni Ricciardi
DYING AT MATTMARK
The last Tragedy of Italian Emigration
2015
Hardcover, pp. 200
TONI RICCIARDI, is historian of emigration at the University of Genève.
Director of the series «Gegenwart und Geschichte/Présent et Histoire»
(Seismo), he published, among other books, Associazionismo ed emigrazione.
Storia delle Colonie Libere e degli Italiani in Svizzera (2013).
Published in German and in French by Seismo (Switzerland)
All other rights Donzelli editore
www.donzelli.it
51
history
history
50
The Mattmark tragedy of 30 August 1965 fuelled the debate in
Switzerland, which had already been going on for a few years,
regarding the country’s largely uncontrolled economic
development, which required ever more foreign labour –
especially for big infrastructural projects – including low-skilled
labour, which had been abandoned by the Swiss. For the Italian
community in Switzerland, the tragedy represented an
opportunity to reflect on the meaning of their presence in a
country in which they were not accepted and were not well
integrated.
Using the Mattmark tragedy as a case study, this book
demonstrates how the identitarian construction of Switzerland as
a whole, and its relationship with foreigners, is strongly linked to
the identitarian construction of the Canton of Valais, where the
tragedy occurred. Mattmark represents a major turning point in
Switzerland’s long and tormented relationship with foreigners: it
changed Switzerland’s perception of foreigners and of the Swiss
themselves and resulted in significant social, media-related and
political changes, especially regarding the subject of work safety.
Nowadays, when emigration is becoming again a crucial issue, it
is important to know what happened in European recent past and
not to forget.
Massimo L. Salvadori
BRIEF HISTORY OF DEMOCRACY
STORIA
DELLA DEMOCRAZIA
political thought
52
2016 - Forthcoming
Hardcover, pp. 600
Peripezie di un’idea politica
dall’antica Grecia al mondo globalizzato
La sintesi magistrale
di un grande storico
DONZELLI EDITORE
MASSIMO L. SALVADORI, a Professor emeritus at the University of Turin,
taught History of Political Doctrines. An authoritative commentator at “La
Repubblica”, he is the author of several books, among which are: Potere e
libertà nel mondo moderno (Power and Freedom in the Modern World, Yale
University Press, 1996); L’Europa degli americani (The Americans’ Europe, Yale
University Press, 2005) and, published by Donzelli: L’idea di progresso (2006);
Liberalismo italiano (2011); Le stelle, le strisce, la democrazia (2014).
www.donzelli.it
53
political thought
Comprehending democracy – as a power, as government and as the
supreme sovereignty of the people – its chances for being
implemented, its positive or negative aspects, especially its being a
myth or a reality, has always constituted a problem, ever since
ancient Greece. From the 18th century onwards, bitter divisions,
contrasting the advocates of direct democracy with the supporters
of representative democracy, have never been absent. One of the
greatest historians on politics is offering us these pages of a book
destined to become a classic, with a dual intent: on the one hand,
reconstructing the history – from the age of Pericles to our time –
of the great classical political philosophers’ thought on the theme
of democracy and its dilemmas, on the other, offering a series of
reflections on the limits and even the upheavals which the people’s
sovereignty went through and could not avoid going through, over
its diverse implementations as a myth, a powerful ideology and an
abstract project. As a corollary of this twofold reading level,
Salvadori focuses on the serious process of deterioration which
liberal democracy has suffered – despite being proclaimed the
triumphing party after the political and moral collapse of
totalitarian Communism, which claimed to embody true democracy
- starting from Neoliberalism’s victorious attack in the late
Seventies of the past century, which increasingly shifted the centre
of decision-making from individual States towards large supernational industrial and financial oligarchies. A situation which raises
the question of what the future of democracy might be and what
possible ways may exist towards its rebirth.
Vittoria Franco
RESPONSIBILITY
A short History of an Idea
philosophy
54
2015
Paperback, pp. 208
DONZELLI EDITORE
VITTORIA FRANCO, is a researcher at the Scuola Normale Superiore of
Pisa in History of Philosophy. Elected as a Senator in 2001 with the Partito
Democratico, she has published with Donzelli Etiche possibili (1996), Bioetica
e procreazione assistita (2005) e Care ragazze (2011).
www.donzelli.it
55
philosophy
Vittoria Franco
RESPONSABILITÀ
Figure e metamorfosi di un concetto
What is responsibility? When was this word born? Are
responsibility ethics possible today? These are the questions
Vittoria Franco’s new book tries to answer, through an analysis of
the origins of this term, its transformations and its paradigms:
juridical, political, philosophical and moral ones. The first part of
this volume is dedicated to the biography and to the genesis of
this concept and to the presentation of early debates in which the
philosophical and moral paradigm takes shape, beginning from
the Sixties of the 19th century. This theme was launched in
particular by John Stuart Mill and the determinists, in identifying
being responsible with being guilty and responsibility with
chargeability. Among the reactions registered, there are those by
Kant’s followers and by the French spiritualists, who propose
interpretations that leave space for freedom and morality,
endangered by the determinists. Two young philosophers among
them brought important innovations to the interpretation of
responsibility: Lucien Lévy-Bruhl, with his concept of empty
responsibility, and Jean-Marie Guayau with the notion of morals
without obligations. In the second part of the volume, the author
visits some of the most important 20th century ethical theories,
and proposes the idea of ethics on responsibility as a possible
answer in the age of the demise of metaphysics. According to the
author, responsibility arises together with the awareness of letting
the other’s freedom be. Through her dense, but extremely clear
and accessible itinerary, Vittoria Franco shows how much this
idea has changed throughout the centuries: born as chargeability
and fault, we find it as the foundation of contemporary ethics, of
self-determination ethics opening out to a care for the world, to
yielding totally to the other.
Ernesto De Martino
SOUTH AND MAGIC
2015
Hardcover, pp. 370
ERNESTO DE MARTINO (1908-1965), ethnologist, anthropologist and
religion historian, was one of the greatest scholars on the folklore and
religion of the Italian Midi. He was responsible for a historical view of
magical and religious events and certain innovative research based on
ethnography and work by interdisciplinary teams.
Edition rights: Donzelli editore
www.donzelli.it
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history of thought
history of thought
56
The time has come to reclaim Ernesto De Martino’s South and
Magic. Fifty years after its author’s death, this classic ethnographic
survey on the Italian Midi can be read today for what it actually is:
an extremely modern, even a forerunner contribution to deep
insights into the mores and rituals of popular culture that lead to
redemption, by means of a “presence crisis” within strong and
perturbed critical contexts. This “lower ceremonial magic”
practiced by Lucanian farmers is interpreted as a rich established
culture which is able to offer existential protection to the working
classes, within a livelihood regimen dominated by material
povertyDand political oppression. In de Martino’s view, magical
rites and symbols do not denote a primitive mentality located on
the fringe of history: on the contrary, the book strives to consider
them within a broader religious history of the South and the
relationships between the ruling and the subject classes which
configure themselves within it. Bravely published for the first time
by Feltrinelli in 1959, this book gives an account of the research
conducted by the author on popular culture in Lucania over a
series of ethnographic expeditions.His survey analyses those
practices of possession, enthralment and magic which «reveal
structural and functional characteristics, all the more readily
because of their uncouthness and primitivity, of the same magic
moment also found in Catholicism – albeit a refined and
sublimated one», meaning the more complex forms of Southern
religion. Introduced by a solid historical and critical essay by the
editors, this new edition will include all the texts and photographs
from the original one, accompanied and expanded by mostly
unpublished material, collected here for the first time into a
structured itinerary, introducing the reader to the extraordinary
ethnological work-site which gave life to the text of South and
Magic.
Gaetano Salvemini
AMERICAN LETTERS
(1933 – 1948)
2015
Hardcover, pp. 645
GAETANO SALVEMINI (1873 – 1957) was an Italian anti-fascist politician,
historian and writer. From 1919 to 1921 he served in Italian Parliament. As
member of the Socialist Party he fought for Universal Suffrage and for the
moral and economic rebirth of Italian Midi, and against corruption in
Politics. After his arrest in 1925 for opposing the newly formed Italian
fascist regime, he left Italy but continued to actively organise resistance to
Benito Mussolini in France, England and finally in the USA. From 1930 to
1948 he lectured in History at Harvard University and 1940 he obtained US
citizenship.
This book is the first volume of a new Donzelli’s series, entitled
The Exiles Century. Under the coordination of Renato Camurri,
this series aim to reconstruct the stories, both individual and
collective, of people who were victims of political and racial
persecutions during the 20th century: stories that are almost
always adventurous and dramatic. Ideas, knowledge, skills and
artistic sensitivity also move along with the protagonists of these
events. This series thus wishes to reconstruct the flow of
knowledge moving within European borders and between the
two shores of the Atlantic.
www.donzelli.it
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political thought
political thought
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The result of several years of research in various American and
Italian archives, this collection of unpublished letters spans a
timeline corresponding to the American exile period of Gaetano
Salvemini (1933-1948), a period that is amongst the less studied in
the historian’s biography. Then a professor at Harvard University,
which fame he was already enjoying before arriving at the
prestigious Cambridge one, as well as that for his commitment in
collaborations with Italian and American newspapers, magazines
and the publication of several books, Salvemini embodied a
fundamental point of reference within the community made up
by European intellectuals engaged in a common battle against
totalitarianisms and in the debate on the crisis and future of
democracy. Indeed, as opposed to an old and outdated image
handed down to us by certain biographers, the Salvemini who
emerges from these letters is not the hermit shut up in his study
at Widener Library in Harvard. His profile is rather that of an
intellectual fully immersed in American academic and scientific
life, at the hub of a vast network of social and cultural relations,
a refugee capable of living the traumatic experience of exile as an
opportunity for transforming his wealth of knowledge.
Niccolò Machiavelli
THE PRINCE
parallel text with translation
into modern Italian by
Carmine Donzelli
political thought
60
2013
Hardcover, pp. 500
NICCOLÒ MACHIAVELLI (1469 – 1527) was an Italian historian, politician,
diplomat, philosopher, humanist and writer based in Florence during the
Renaissance. He was for many years an official in the Florentine Republic,
with responsibilities in diplomatic and military affairs. He was a founder of
modern political science, and more specifically political ethics. Secretary of
the Republic of Florence from 1498 to 1512, he wrote his masterpiece, The
Prince, after the Medici had recovered power and he no longer held a
position of responsibility in Florence.
Rights sold to: Livraria Martins Fontes (Brazil), Verso Books
(English Language)
After 500 years from its first appearence, The Prince continues to be
one of the most controversial and contended books of our culture.
A new philological and critical edition by Gabriele Pedullà shows the
actuality of this classic of Modern Political Thought.
KEY POINTS OF THIS EDITION:
- An original interpretation of The Prince in which the book is
considered in relation to the philosophical and political context of
the 16th century, free from the ideological readings of the last two
centuries. In positioning the treatise in his time, also through a study
of material culture, Pedullà shows, paradoxically, the surprising
actuality of Machiavelli’s book;
- A translation in Modern Italian to be used as a basis of the foreign
edition;
- A new comment, for the first time based on all the classical authors
used by Machiavelli in writing his text, and not on the edition by
Laurence Burd (1891) which is the origin of most of the
contemporary comments.
- Through Pedullà’s study, Machiavelli is not only seen in relation to
the Classical authors who he studied and appreciated so much, but
also in his connection to the philosophers of Humanism. Collecting
more than 400 humanistic works, Pedullà shows the reason why The
Prince, especially in the light of its relation to the culture of his era,
was immediately considered as a revolutionary text – and still is.
- 19 among graphics, maps and original schemes allow to understand
The Prince in the political and philosophical context of its time, in a
very clear – but never simplistic – way.
www.donzelli.it
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political thought
introduction and notes by
Gabriele Pedullà
philosophy & literature
62
2013
Hardcover, pp. 1348
GIACOMO LEOPARDI (1798-1837) was an Italian poet, essayist,
philosopher, and philologist. Although he lived in Recanati, a secluded
town in the ultra-conservative Papal States, he came in touch with the main
thoughts of the Enlightenment, and, by his own literary evolution, created
a remarkable and renowned poetic work.
FABIANA CACCIAPUOTI edited for Donzelli the six volumes of the
thematic edition of the Zibaldone, published in 2003. She obteined the
Doctorat d’État at the Sorbonne of Paris and is a member of the Scientific
Committee of the Centro nazionale di studi leopardiani of Recanati.
All rights Donzelli editore.
On Passions was sold to Livraria Martins Fontes (Brazil), Siruela
(Spain) and Yale University Press (USA).
Giacomo Leopardi
ZIBALDONE. THE NOTEBOOK OF THOUGHTS
Thematic Edition based on the Leopardian Indexes
For a whole century, ever since Carducci patronised its first
printed edition in 1898-1900, the Zibaldone by Giacomo Leopardi
has become a symbol of the “fragment” par excellence.
Considered by everybody an absolute masterpiece of literary
prose, it was presented by long-standing tradition as a pointedly
non-systematic work, as a flux of thoughts with no order. Over a
century after that first edition, Cacciapuoti’s critical and
philological work has revealed the concept of a great opus for
“tracts”, for which the enormous amount of notes gathered in his
notebooks does not represent anything other than a huge
preparatory task; a text endowed with precise significant keys,
organisable – when not completely organised – starting from well
defined thematic focusing points. A hint for a similar project is
contained in the letter dated 1826, with which Leopardi answered
his publisher in Milan, when he was asked to compose a
Philosophical Dictionary: «As to the Philosophical Dictionary, I
wrote to you that I had the contents ready, which is true; but the
style, which is the most fatiguing thing, is totally missing, as they
are flung upon paper with words that are barely intelligible,
perhaps only to myself... and in order to be able to extract the
ones that might be part of a given article, I would need to read all
these thousands of pages, to mark thoughts that might be
pertinent, to set them out, to order them...». This tidying and
indexing project of his notes has been carried out through a
rigorous system of items and numbers, drawn up on different
cards held at the national Library in Naples. And it is exactly by
following these indexes that all the texts have been “remounted”,
thus reconstructing his tendential system. The thematic edition of
the Zibaldone, published by Donzelli in six volumes in 2003, is now
definitively reorganised in a single volume. A new collation of
Leopardian material, a true editorial event.
www.donzelli.it
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philosophy & literature
From the fragments to the system.
In one volume, Leopardi’s thought,
organized according to Leopardi
literature
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2015
Paperback, pp. 296
CARLO LEVI (1902 – 1975) painter, author and politician, was sentenced
for his antifascist activities to exile in Lucania. He was an Italian Senator
from 1963 until 1972. Donzelli has published the entire corpus of Carlo
Levi’s non-fiction work in several volumes, including Roma fuggitiva (published in English language by John Wiley & Sons under the title Fleeting
Rome), Il dovere dei tempi, Le tracce della memoria, Le mille patrie, Lo specchio and
Le ragioni dei topi.
Carlo Levi
THE THOUSAND FATHERLANDS
People, Facts and Towns of Italy
«Italy is a mysterious country. Open to glances and invasions,
centuries and peoples have passed over it; ancient civilisations,
thoughts, religions have inspired and moved it, and they have left
subsequent strata, like sediments brought by great rivers over the
ages. Today, every one of its aspects is composite, each of its
stones is full of multiple meanings». This is the opening of Carlo
Levi’s extraordinary book: in these pages the author of Christ
Stopped at Eboli speaks once again about Italy and its inhabitants,
giving us this grandiose fresco as a gift. Being spurred by the
conviction that «the future» always has «an ancient heart», Levi
deems it necessary to know the «thousand fatherlands» which
make up Italy in order to make them active subjects within one’s
present. It is thus that journalism reporting becomes a tool for
dealing with the people, the facts and the towns of Italy, a way for
reaching a form of knowledge that travels through the eyes and
the heart and gives back multi-faceted Italian abundance, beyond
any reassuring stereotype. The considerations gathered here,
which came out from the second post-war period until the
Seventies on the main Italian and foreign newspapers, show the
constancy of Levi’s regard and the unity of his vision of the
world, is spite of being so diversified.
Rights sold to: Livraria Martins Fontes
www.donzelli.it
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literature
From the author of Christ stopped at Eboli,
a stunning reportage into Southern Italy
BACKLIST
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Mark Twain is one of the most frequently quoted authors of all time.
One of his most frequently cited phrases, are taken from a brief
handbook he wrote for “good girls” in 1906: “You ought never to
“sass” old people unless they “sass” you first”. This is the last bit of
advice offered to little girls by Twain, whose style in this work is at its
most authentically sly and irreverent. Though his purpose is ostensibly
to teach little girls proper manners, this old fox in fact instigates
unwavering resistance and merciless retaliation against domineering
parents, siblings, friends, teachers and grandparents. Here is another
example: “If your mother tells you to do a thing, it is wrong to reply
that you won’t. It is better and more becoming to intimate that you will
do as she bids you, and then afterward act quietly in the matter
according to the dictates of your best judgment”. What more could
there be to add but a visual commentary that is just as mischievously
impertinent? Thanks to the artwork created especially for Donzelli by
prominent contemporary artist Vladimir Radunsky, this book walks a
deliberately fine line between children’s book (for grown-up and not so
grown-up children) and work of art.
2010 Hardcover, pp. 24
Rights sold to: Brazil (Livraria Martins Fontes), Spanish language
(Editorial Sexto Piso), Germany (Aufbau), Greece (Papyros Publishing
Group)
Carlo Levi
FLEETING ROME
Fleeting Rome is a vibrant and evocative portrayal of everyday life in
Rome from the end of World War II to the student movements of the
1960s. Carlo Levi skilfully and lovingly sketches a portrait of the city
and of its inhabitants through changing seasons and changing times. In
this complex love affair with Rome, Levi explores the streets of the city
that was for many years his home: a city at once fleeting and eternal,
noble and plebeian, a city of dreams and illusions. Levi brings
magnificently to life Rome in the post war and Dolce Vita eras. Fleeting
Rome vividly evokes the sounds of the city, its odours, its beauty.
2011 Paperback, pp. 188
Rights sold to: UK (John Wiley & Sons)
Giovanni Starace
OBJECT AND LIFE
Objects are the mirror of what we are, of the people who fill our
existence and the ones who accompanied us in the stages of life. Starace
composes a meaningful, intense tale, and a very pleasant one to read,
around the theme of our relation to the objects populating life, thanks
to a wide range of references to psychoanalytical, anthropological and
sociological literature, alternated successfully with literary quotations,
short mentions of clinical cases and autobiographical fragments. A
heavyweight and appealing book, which activates immediate recognition
within its readers, in touching something deeply relating to each one of
us.
2013, Paperback, 250 pages
Rights sold to: Brazil (Livraria Martins Fontes)
Remo Bodei
AN INTRODUCTION TO THE 20TH CENTURY PHILOSOPHY
From Dilthey’s historicism to the Foucault s studies about cultural
power, this book of Remo Bodei rebuilds the history of contemporary
philosophy. A fundamental instrument to try to understand the
theoretical antecedents of this new millennium and a very good
introduction to the principal themes of our times by one of the most
important Italian thinkers.
Rights sold to: Brazil (Edusc), France (Flammarion), Spain (Alianza).
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Mark Twain & Vladimir Radunsky
ADVICE TO LITTLE GIRLS
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“A warning to readers: this may not be the book for you. If you are
looking for a how-to manual on the latest walking trends (…) or if
you’re looking for long-winded stories about walks, for the sake of
clarity, I repeat: this is not the book for you. This book contains one
thesis: there is nothing more alternative or subversive to today’s
reigning way of thinking than walking. Full stop”. These are the
opening lines to a concise book that uses walking as its compass as it
embarks on a path through a geographical and mental landscape. Page
after page, readers will discover that walking is synonymous with
thinking. As the title suggests, it is a way of thought. It is practical
thinking. Walking gives us a way to reflect on freedom, equality,
resistance, progress, and much more. This is a book about thoughts,
ideas, categories, and legends. It talks of people who, by walking, have
helped us develop a better understanding of the world and ourselves.
“Walking is three-fold movement: it is a refusal to succumb to haste,
willingness to be open to the world, and a reminder to not forget
ourselves along the way”, without being swept away by our lives’ hectic
pace, because sometimes it is best to walk and not run.
Federico Fellini
THE ART OF VISION
Rome, April 1993: Fellini welcomes Goffredo Fofi and Gianni Volpi to
his studio on several occasions to give an interview that is destined to
make history. The topic of their conversations is not so much his
cinematic oeuvre as is it is cinema itself, or rather, as Fofi writes in the
preface to this book which publishes transcripts from these interviews
for the first time ever, the decline of cinema and the world he had
known, a world in which he was able to carve out a place for himself with
great intelligence. This book’s appendix contains Fellini’s filmography
and eight photographs by Paul Ronald shot on set during the making of
“8 e 1/2”.
Rights sold to: Brazil (Livraria Martin Fontes), Spain (Ediciones
Gallonero)
Roberto Rossellini
ISLAM
“Now that the world is ever more lacerated by new misunderstandings
and fresh resentments, the need to do something useful is urgent. A
deep fracture has opened between the West, proud of its supposed
pragmatism, and the Muslim world which, finally reawakened, has now
found the courage to show itself. Is this solely a conflict of interests?
No, the problem is bigger, much bigger…”. If you consider that
Roberto Rossellini wrote these words in 1976 it is difficult not to get
goose pimples. Rossellini sensed the danger of a conflict of civilizations
and theorized the need to know the rich roots of Arab culture and of
its profound relations with Western culture. Islam was a project for a
film dedicated to the Muslim world and culture which unfortunately was
never produced.
Rights sold to: Brazil (Livraria Martin Fontes)
Angelo Bolaffi
GERMAN HEART
Can we do without Germany? Can we move away from Europe? In
times of crisis, this sort of questions arises continuously. But what is
Germany today? Is it still the country which has represented the grand
problem of modern Europe from Bismarck onwards? Or has it
changed? Today, 20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, symbolical end
of the 20th century, the “German issue” has undergone a surprising
metamorphosis: the German model is revealing itself the most efficient
from an economic point of view, and the most capable of defending
social and political victories Welfare. Today, Germany is becoming again
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Adriano Labbucci
WALKING. A WAY OF THOUGHT
BACKLIST
andabsolute protagonist. Bolaffi, one of the top experts on German
culture, undertakes a long journey into German history and politics, in
order to understand the reasons for that “German miracle” which is
spiritual even before being economic. This is a necessary step to be
taken, because the construction of a United Europe has to get through
a double acknowledgment: onone hand, European people have to look
at Germany accepting its hegemony as historically based, and on
the other hand, Germany, a country which has painfully dealt with his
tragic past, for this very reason has to welcome the duty and the honour
of taking the responsibility for the fate of Europe.
2013, 2014 Paperback, pp. 160
Rights sold to: Germany (Klett Cotta)
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Massimo Amato, Luca Fantacci
THE END OF FINANCE
The aim of the book is to tackle frontally the questions, paradoxes and
challenges raised by the present crisis, beginning with a simple question:
what is actually in crisis today? Answering this question implies, in the first
place, inquiring into the very nature of finance: What is the function of
the financial system? How, in relation to this function, are we to judge the
instruments contrived by financial innovation and indeed the very
principle of a “democratisation of finance”? What does it mean to say
that finance must be “in the service” of the real economy? These simple
questions come up against a widespread tendency to avoid them, and this
is why, in order to be able to raise them, we must first take the necessary
run-up.
2009, 2012 Paperback, pp. 250
Rights sold to: UK (Polity Press)
Massimo Amato & Luca Fantacci
HOW TO SAVE THE MARKET FROM CAPITALISM
«Saying no to financial markets does not mean giving up the market at
all. It simply means giving up running a market with what is not
merchandise, meaning money and credit». Finance has a vital task:
giving breath and impetus to the economy. Nowadays the predominant
forms of finance, the financial markets, are not carrying out this task
well. On the contrary, sometimes they work against it. It is necessary to
conceive and roll out another sort of finance. In spite of the economic
crisis financial markets have gained an increasing power. Far from
becoming the object of reflection and reform, they continue to dictate.
Dominance by markets is politically unlawful, economically damaging,
humanely aberrant. It is necessary to get out of it. However, it is not an
issue of «abolishing finance», but of being committed to a project for
changing its format radically. From a practical point of view, a few
germs of change are already emerging. We are witnessing the return to
financial and banking practices considered obsolete until recently, but
which are now showing all their solidity, such as cooperative forms of
credit and financing without interest. On the other hand, other practices
are emerging spontaneously, like local and international compensation
systems. But what is still missing is a comprehensive, both theoretical
and political vision in which to integrate old and new practices. This
essay is dedicated to thinking out and planning another finance.
Rights sold to: UK (Polity Press)
Stefano Bartolini
A MANIFESTO FOR HAPPINESS
We live in rich countries, we have access to goods, education and Wealth
care and we lead longer lives. And yet, every one of us feels a sense of
widespread dissatisfaction. Our relationships have been sacrificed on the
altar of material affluence, which knows only two imperatives: work and
the consumption of material goods. Hence our growing unhappiness.
Several studies on the degree of “happiness” felt in the world’s most
developed countries have confirmed the truth of this portrait. Bartolini
asks himself why rich countries haven’t succeeded in combining economic
development and wellbeing. At the core of the problem lies the fact that
our economic prosperity has come hand in hand with the progressive
impoverishment of our social and affective relationships. Yet, combining
economic prosperity and happiness is as possible as it is necessary. Some
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Corrado Vivanti
NICCOLÒ MACHIAVELLI
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The time of Machiavelli’s life – 1469-1527 – was a period of profound
changes which affected the very vision of the world dominant until then.
To perceive the link between his activity and his writings, which soon
became fundamental for an understanding of what happened when
human beings organized political societies, is the aim of this book, which
Corrado Vivanti – among the greatest Machiavelli scholars – conceived
as the synthesis and seal of his long period of research, taking into
consideration the most famous writings, from The Prince to Mandragola,
from the Discorsi sopra la prima deca di Tito Livio to the Arte della Guerra.
Based on lessons learned from ancient events and on the experience of
modern ones, the work of the Florentine Secretary yet again shows that
it can promote a better understanding of the times and of the world.
Rights sold to: US (Princeton UP), Spanish language (Paidos)
Franco Lo Piparo
GRAMSCI’S TWO JAILS
«That Gramsci was a criticizer of established Communism in the 1930s,
is recognised by everyone nowadays. His Notebooks are a document of
his tormented reflections. He feels a prisoner of two jails. In the end he
manages to get out of the Fascist prison. The other jail remains. The
more painful one from a human point of view. In spite of the
subsequent Party «vulgate», which would describe Gramsci as having
«died in Fascist prisons», he spent his last two years and a half on
parole. Is it plausible that he stopped writing almost completely in those
years? And why did he not resume his contacts with the Party chiefs
and International Communism? Some of these queries are new. They
are all still waiting for convincing answers. Lo Piparo has chosen to start
from the letter from Gramsci to Tania dated 27 February 1933, through
his linguist’s glass, which the sister-in-law described as «a masterpiece of
Aesop-like speech» due to its allusive language. This letter is the lockpicker with which the casket enclosing the complex political and human
personality of the prisoner may be forced open. Jailed as «secretary of
the Partito comunista d’Italia», Gramsci came out convinced that all his
life had been «a great mistake, a blunder».
Rights sold to: France (CNRS Editiòns), Turkey (Iletisim Publishing).
Franco Lo Piparo
THE NOTEBOOK ENIGMA
Upon Gramsci’s death (1937), his sister-in-law Tania had the exclusive
control of the Notebooks. Nobody knew exactly what they contained.
These were the dramatic years of facile trials, with relative firing-squad
executions for communists dissenting from Stalin. Togliatti (head of the
Italian communists in exile) and Piero Sraffa (an undercover
communist,an esteemed professor of economics at Cambridge, a
Comintern agent) had their good reasons for fearing those manuscripts
might contain dangerous thoughts. They had to be shielded from
indiscreet eyes. They had to be read before others could, to decide what
to do with them. After the success of Gramsci’s Two Prisons, which
reopened the terms of the debate surrounding Gramsci’s imprisonment,
Lo Piparo’s new book gives centre stage tocrucial queries: whom did
Tania give up the notebooks to? Why do testimonials as to their number
never tally? Did the protagonists leave clues regarding a hidden
Notebook? Lo Piparo’s inquiry, actually leads us in the end to the
discovery of the number of pages from the notebook that isn’t there on.
Rights sold to: France (CNRS Editiòns), Turkey (Iletisim Publishing).
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tangible solutions are contained in this little volume.
2010, 2012 Paperback, pp. 320
Rights sold to: France (LLL), US (University of Pennsylvania Press),
Albania (Perpjekja)
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An incredible success, with some three hundred thousand copies sold
in Italy, translations into several languages, hundreds of reviews and
essays, and a good number of full-length books written in reply to
Bobbio’s thesis. Never until today has the traditional distinction of the
political arena been so fiercely contested, implying that the distinction
has outlived its usefulness.
1992, 2014 Paperback, pp. 240
Rights sold to: Brazil, England, France, Germany, Greece, Japan,
Lituania, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Czech Republic, Norway.
Rights available again: Albania, Bulgaria, Catalonia, Croatia, Corea,
Denmark, Poland, Russia, Serbia, Slovenia, Sweden, Turkey.
Norberto Bobbio
ON MARX
While fascinated by the Marxist understanding of history “from the
point of view of the oppressed”, at the same time Bobbio was a
strenuous adversary of the messianic revolutionary aspects of it. Marx
is alive – writes the Turin philosopher – but this does not mean he is
valid: it is not possible to disregard Marx’s criticism of the capitalistic
system if one wishes to understand contemporary times wholly; the
failure of real socialisms does not equate to a death sentence for Marx’s
thought. Therefore, according to Bobbio, it is not possible to dispense
with coming to grips with what must be considered a “classic” for all
practical purposes, on a par with Hobbes or Hegel, nevertheless
spurning any sanctifying or the temptation, to comment “Marx through
Marx or through certain approved writers”. A beacon of the best
democratic thought.
Alessandro Portelli
THE ORDER HAS BEEN CARRIED OUT
On March 24, 1944, Nazi occupation forces in Rome killed 335
unarmed civilians in retaliation for a partisan attack. Portelli has
crafted an eloquent, oral history of the massacre, of its background
and its aftermath. The moving stories of the victims, the women and
children who survived and carried on, the partisans who fought the
Nazis, and the common people who lived through the tragedies of
the war together paint a many-hued portrait of one of the world’s
most richly historical cities. This is spoken history and its primary
quality lies in telling.
1999, 2006 Paperback, pp. 450
Rights sold to: USA (Palgrave), Argentina (Fondo de Cultura Económica),
Finland (Faros)
Alessandro Portelli
THEY SAY IN HARLAN COUNTY. AN ORAL HISTORY
A counter-history of the United States from the Wild West to today as seen from
one symbolic place: Harlan County, Kentucky, at the heart of mine country in the
Appalachian Mountains. All of America’s history passed through Harlan at one
point or another: the survivors of the Revolutionary War, the Pioneers, slavery,
the Civil War, bootleg whisky, industrialisation and de-industrialisation,
immigration and emigration, the Civil Rights Movement. Harlan is thus an
intensely real place, but it is also one of intense fantasy: it has been featured in
books by Theodore Dreiser and John Dos Passos, films by Robert Mitchum and
Barbara Kopple, songs by Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie. It is a place endowed
with extraordinary narrative, musical, and linguistic creativity and it enjoys an
enduring legacy. This counter-history narrated in the spirit of the oral storytelling,
is a medley of voices that lead us deep into the mines, into the lives of those who
work, live and die inside them. They are the voices of a deep and painfully real
America, one made of coal and blood, the coal and blood needed to fuel the lights
of Hollywood and Broadway.
2011 Hardcover, pp. 572
Rights sold to: Oxford Universiy Press (USA)
75
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Norberto Bobbio
RIGHTS AND LEFT
BACKLIST
BACKLIST
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76
What is the Sicilian Mafia? How has it been able to survive for more
than a century? What is the real relationship between the criminal
organization of “Cosa nostra” and Sicilian society, politics and culture?
For the first time, an historian’s work retraces the entire history of the
Sicilian Mafia from its dark beginning during the Risorgimento to today’s
open fight with the judiciary, the recent murders of Falcone and Borsellino,
and the arrests of Totò Riina and other bosses. This book offers a dramatic
history of a problem whose solution affects the whole world. Recorded
with precision, it is told in an original and compelling form.
Rights sold to: Brazil (Unesp), Usa (Columbia UP), France
(Flammarion), Japan (Hakusui-sha), Portugal (Estampa), Romania
(Editura Polirom), Germany (Patmos), Bulgaria (Lik), Slovenia
(Kalligram), Greece (Melani)
Salvatore Lupo
HISTORY OF FASCISM
What did Fascism mean? Which are the main characteristics that
affirmed Fascism as an original element of the historical and political
scene of the 20th Century? This book encloses the ambition to answer
those questions, without any ideological interpretations. The Fascism
history is not that of the economy society, of a public institution, of
culture, of foreign politics during the twenties. Yet it does become all
this when the history of a political phenomenon aims to become an
antidemocratic revolution. The main object of this revolution was for
the fascist idea to substitute the representative system to a strong
command which would establish dignity to Italy. This work analyses
and underlines the ambiguity of a regime which should not have had
any political contrast between a leader and his followers.
Rights sold to: France (Flammarion).
Giovanni Miccoli
FRANCIS OF ASSISI
The history of Francis of Assisi represents one of the keystones in the
entire bi millenary events of Christianity. And neither does such a point
exhaust itself in its biographical affairs, as its extraordinary vital journey
welds itself with the historic affairs of the order he founded: an order
which became the most vibrant one in the whole of western Christianity
in just a few decades. In actual fact, the link between its original
Christian proposals and the aims pursued by the order proceeding from
there, poses a few problems. It is not by chance if the figure of Francis
has become a point of reference for an outstanding variety of
movements and perspectives, often in open contradiction with what his
authentic writings suggest and recommend. The central aspect of the
long and still highly topical “Franciscan question”, made even more
intriguing by cardinal Bergoglio’s choice of adopting his name for the
first time as bishop of Rome, is right within these intricate problems:
because the many Francises which tradition has construed sum up and
add themselves to the historical Francis, who is widely recognizable in
his fundamental aspects, and continue to propose multiple, different
models for religious experience.
Julia Kristeva
THE NEED TO BELIEVE
Julia Kristeva, intellectual, semiologist, psychoanalyst, and writer has
accepted a high challenge: to speak to an audience in the principal
Catholic church of France about no less a matter than suffering, and to
speak of it as the lay person she professes to be. But also to speak of it
with sensitive attention to that “need to believe” and to that elaboration
of pain which represent one of the most original contributions of
Christianity to our civilization. In this book, where the text of the
conference of Notre-Dame is accompanied by a long essay written
especially for this work, Kristeva looks at her new intellectual challenges,
77
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Salvatore Lupo
HISTORY OF MAFIA
and poses, with exemplary and unsettling lucidity, painfully pertinent
questions.
Rights sold to: France (Bayard), Spain (Paidos), US (Columbia), Poland
(Taiwpn Universitas) and Serbia (Sluzbeni glasnik).
Giuseppe Sergi
THE IDEA OF THE MIDDLE AGES
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78
What is the meaning of the Middle Ages? In this short, exceedingly
fertile essay, a great historian attempts to wrestle with the most basic
questions. The point of departure is the “cliché of the Middles Ages”,
that deformation of our perspective that leads us to read an entire
lengthy historical phase as an elsewhere or as a preface. In the negative
elsewhere, there is poverty, hunger, political disorder, the superstitions
of the common folk, and the corruption of the clergy. In the positive
elsewhere, there are tournaments, court life, elves and fairies, loyal
knights and magnanimous princes. Sergi suggests a different way to
read these thousand years of history: consider it as a workshop, in
which it is possible to observe men and structures, in an open interplay
that is complex and fascinating.
Rights sold to: France (Flammarion), Spain (Editorial Critica)
THE IDEA OF PROGRESS
The history of the modern idea of Progress, founded on the link
between the ethical improvement of man, good government, and the
positive march of science, technology, and economy, is, on one hand,
the history of a hope born during the Enlightenment; on the other, it
is the history of a myth and an illusion, smashed by two world wars, by
totalitarian dictatorships, and by the genocides of the 20th Century. Yet
is it possible for the contemporary world to file away as obsolete a
concept and an aspiration that is such a natural part of our spirit?
BACKLIST
Rather than filing it away, it would perhaps be better to rethink and
recover a new sense of Progress, one compatible with our past and
present history.
Rights sold to: UK (Zed Books); Germany (Wagenbach); Greece (Savalas)
79
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BACKLIST
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