The Art of Joy
A Novel
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4.5 • 2 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
The tumultuous twentieth century, told through the life of a single extraordinary woman
Rejected by a series of publishers, abandoned in a chest for twenty years, Goliarda Sapienza's masterpiece, The Art of Joy, survived a turbulent path to publication. It wasn't until 2005, when it was released in France, that this novel received the recognition it deserves. At last, Sapienza's remarkable book is available in English, in a brilliant translation by Anne Milano Appel and with an illuminating introduction by Angelo Pellegrino.
The Art of Joy centers on Modesta, a Sicilian woman born on January 1, 1900, whose strength and character are an affront to conventional morality. Impoverished as a child, Modesta believes she is destined for a better life. She is able, through grace and intelligence, to secure marriage to an aristocrat—without compromising her own deeply felt values. Friend, mother, lover—Modesta revels in upsetting the rules of her fascist, patriarchal society.
This is the history of the twentieth century, transfigured by the perspective of one extraordinary woman. Sapienza, an intriguing figure in her own right—her father homeschooled her so she wouldn't be exposed to fascist influences—was a respected actress and writer who drew on her own struggles to craft this powerful epic. A fictionalized memoir, a book of romance and adventure, a feminist text, a bildungsroman—this novel is ultimately undefinable but deeply necessary; its genius will leave readers breathless.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This massive book, unpublished when Sapienza died in 1996, first printed in a limited edition spearheaded by a friend, then reprinted to become a sensation in France, finally appears in English. It's easy to see why it didn't sell initially and why it has such passionate promoters now: the story of Modesta, born poor in Sicily in 1900, passionate reader, lover of men and women, and fighter against fascism and patriarchy, is a stirring and potentially shocking tale of a woman's awakening. Unfortunately, it is often filled with exposition and moralizing. The strong first section introduces Modesta just when she's discovered the art of self-pleasure. Surviving rape and fire, she's taken into a convent where she discovers another source of pleasure: words, and the ability to manipulate others. She leaves the convent for the home of the well-to-do Brandifortis, where she learns how to make love and run an estate. The later sections, in which Modesta reads Gramsci, fascism begins its rise, and the Brandiforti family expands and contracts in complicated ways, feature Modesta's too-frequent sermons explaining love and deploring men. Still, with its specificity of place, experimentation (Sapienza switches between third- and first-person points of view, sometimes on the same page), and pugnacious determination to use one woman's life to show a tradition-bound world struggling toward modernity, Sapienza's singular book compels.
