Novel
The World Machine
La macchina mondiale
Paolo Volponi · 1965
Synopsis
Anteo Crocioni, a peasant from San Savino, in the Marche, is summoned to the court of Urbino for beating his wife, Massimina. He denies it, then admits the blows and explains that he wanted to make her understand his doctrine: according to him, men were made by other beings, themselves machines, and it falls to those of today to make the next generation. He tells of his life, his reading and the treatise he is writing, in a village that rejects him.
Context
The novel was published by Garzanti, in Milan, in 1965; it was its author's second novel. Everything in it is told by Anteo himself, in the first person, so that the reader never knows whether he is reading a social critique or the discourse of a disturbed mind. Maurice Javion translated it into French at Grasset in 1969 under the title “Le Système d'Anteo Crocioni”; in English, Belén Sevareid translated it in 1967 under the title “The Worldwide Machine”, and Richard Dixon in 2024 under that of “The World Machine”.
Who it is for
A novel in which the narrator pleads his own case from beginning to end, with nothing guaranteeing what he says.
Prizes and reception
It received the Strega Prize in 1965; the critical response was divided, some judging the writing too cerebral.
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