Portrait of a Family with a Fat Daughter (Dedalus Europe) - Softcover

Giacobino, Margherita; Landry, Judith

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1910213489 ISBN 13: 9781910213483

Publisher: Dedalus Limited, 2018

Synopsis

'It has been a long while in Italian fiction since such an authentic and engaging voice has appeared.' Bruno Quaranta in La Stampa

'This memoir of four generations of a family provides a vivid and eloquent picture of Italian life stretching from the late 19th century, when the peasant lifestyle had changed little from medieval times, up to the consumer culture of the 1950s. It’s a saga that embraces characters like Maria, who emigrated to the USA for an unwise marriage, returning a few years later with a daughter and paralysis down one side of her body, and the author’s father, Angelo, a feckless chap who was interned in a German POW camp. In writing about her female-dominated family, some of whom she is old enough to remember – most notably the matriarchal grandmother Ninin – Giacobino imbues her account with a real sense of intimacy. She has a powerful feel for traditional Italian culture, her early chapters conjuring up a time when the hierarchy of the family was the only true reality, fairness was unknown and “a moment’s tenderness must last a week”.

Alastair Mabbutt in The Herald

'An epic novel, which is the story of an Italy which no longer exists, becomes the portrait of a family. It is a novel which touches the heart.' Valeria Parrella in Grazie

About this title

About the Author

Margherita Giacobino, born in 1952, lives in Turin. She is a writer,journalist, academic and translator . She translated - among others - Emily Bronte, Gustave Flaubert, Margaret Atwood, Dorothy Allison, Audre Lorde. She made her debut in 1993 with the novel Un' Americana a Parigi written under the pseudonym of Elinor Rigby. !n 1996 she published Casalinghe All'Inferno, in 2007 L'Educazione Sentimentale Di C.B. and in 2010 L'Uovo Fuori Dal Cavagno. The Portrait of a Family with a Fat Daughter published in Italy in 2015 has been translated into English, French and German.

Judith Landry was educated at Somerville College, Oxford where she obtained a first class honours degree in French and Italian.

Her translations from Italian for Dedalus are: The House by the Medlar Tree by Giovanni Verga, New Finnish Grammar, God's Dog, The Last of the Vostyachs and The Interpreter by Diego Marani, The Mussolini Canal by Antonio Pennacchi, Portrait of a Family with a Fat Daughter by Margherita Giacobino.

Her translation of New Finnish Grammar was awarded the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize in 2012 and was shortlisted for the Best Translated Book Award.

Review

"...a rural version of Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan saga, a powerful and atmospheric record of unexplored terrain."--Margaret Drabble

About this edition

• Publisher: Dedalus Limited
• Publication date: 2018
• ISBN 10: 1910213489
• ISBN 13: 9781910213483
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 304