Narrative
Villa Tarantola
Not translated into English
Vincenzo Cardarelli · 1948
Synopsis
Eight autobiographical prose pieces that return to Tarquinia, the small Maremma town where the author was born, and to Rome, where he went as a teenager. They contain a dilapidated villa that filled the child's imagination, the station buffet his father ran, then the difficult beginnings of a self-taught man in journalism, the figures and readings that shaped him, all in an ironic language without lyricism.
Context
The book appeared in Milan in 1948 from the Edizioni della Meridiana and was awarded the Strega the same year, when the prize was only in its second edition, ahead of books by Anna Banti, Cesare Pavese and Aldo Palazzeschi. Its texts mix personal memory, passages of poetry and historical material, and tell the formation of a writer who had taught himself everything. The eight prose pieces were taken up in 1952, by Mondadori, in the definitive edition of a broader collection by the author.
Who it is for
A very short collection, in prose, without a continuous plot, each piece of which can be read separately from the others.
Prizes and reception
According to the Strega Prize website, the 1948 jury gave it ninety-two votes, against forty-three for Anna Banti.
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