Novel
Tempo di marzo
Not translated into English
Francesco Chiesa · 1925
Synopsis
Nino, a boy from a village in Ticino at the beginning of the twentieth century, is reaching the end of his childhood. The narrative follows the awakening of his moral conscience day by day, between the house, the village and its people, with a humour attentive to characters. Through what the child sees and gradually understands, the whole peasant Ticino of the past passes before the reader's eyes: its places, its customs and its way of life.
Context
The novel appeared in Milan in 1925, announced as early as the end of 1924 by Treves. Born of the childhood tales the author had published earlier, it was his first novel, and he himself attributed it to the influence of Pirandello and of the review La Voce. Its clear prose, with a humour that has been called Manzonian, made it a text studied in the schools of northern Italy as a model of language. Juliette Bertrand translated it and adapted it into French in 1937, and it was reissued in 2016 by Dadò.
Who it is for
In Italian, about three hundred pages. Almost nothing happens in it: the subject is the passage out of childhood, and the language is what makes it worth reading.
Prizes and reception
The best-known book by its author outside Switzerland; it brought Ticino into the textbooks of the Italian language.
Sources for this page 5
The pages consulted to check this page.