Novel
The Moon and the Bonfires
La luna e i falò
Cesare Pavese · 1950
Synopsis
Just after the war, a man nicknamed Anguilla returns to his village in the hills of Piedmont. An orphan raised by a poor peasant, he left very young to seek his fortune in America, and he returns rich. He finds a land and people changed by the war and by time, and tries to understand what happened there under fascism and during the partisan war, while memories of his childhood come back at every step.
Context
The novel was written from September to November 1949 and appeared from Einaudi in 1950; it was the last book the author published in his lifetime. The Strega Prize, received the same year, rewarded another volume, “La bella estate”. Michel Arnaud translated it into French for Gallimard under the title “La Lune et les feux”; into English, after a first translation by Louise Sinclair in 1952, R. W. Flint translated it in 2002 under the title “The Moon and the Bonfires”.
Who it is for
A short novel, in a spoken-sounding sentence, in which the present of the return and childhood memories intertwine without warning.
Prizes and reception
R. W. Flint's translation received the PEN Translation Prize in 2003.