Darkness (Italia) - Hardcover

Maraini, Dacia

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1586420488 ISBN 13: 9781586420482

Publisher: Steerforth Pr, 2002

Synopsis

The award-winning author of Darkness interweaves the stories of Viollca, a preadolescent sold into prostitution; Tano, who brings charges of abuse against his father; and Adele-Sofia, a tender-hearted police commissioner.

About this title

Language Notes

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: Italian

From Booklist

*Starred Review* In a dozen short stories inspired by crime coverage in Italian newspapers, Maraini drives home two crucial points about child rape and murder. The first is that neglectful and corrupt parents deserve a great deal of blame in most child-abuse and abduction cases. The second is that Western nations--and the officials who serve as their instruments of justice--are too often willing to ignore pleas for help from young victims. As terrible as the fates that befall the children in Darkness--an 11-year-old girl is sold into prostitution; an 11-year-old boy files several police reports in a vain attempt to stop his father from raping him and his siblings--the true horror for the reader comes from comprehending how complicit society is in these acts. It's far easier, it seems, to ignore the possibility that orderlies are repeatedly violating an institutionalized little girl than it is to acknowledge that such evils take place every day. In these stark tales, Maraini illuminates truths about the issue that television ignores in its missing-kid-of-the-week coverage. As Adele Sofia, the police inspector who figures in many of the stories, comes to understand, "Children should always be believed before adults." Powerful fiction evocatively translated from the Italian. Frank Sennett
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

About this edition

• Publisher: Steerforth Pr
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 1586420488
• ISBN 13: 9781586420482
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 130