The Myrtle & the Rose - Softcover

Annie Messina

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0934977453 ISBN 13: 9780934977456

Publisher: Italica Press, 2008

Synopsis

In 1981 Annie Messina took the pseudonym Gamîla Ghâli, fearing the uproar this novel would cause, and leaving it to her friend, Leonardo Sciascia, to introduce Ghâli to the Italian reading public. Annie Messina brings both her Sicilian heritage and her years of living in Egypt to bear on this orientalizing fiction. A review of "The Myrtle and the Rose" in "Le Monde" places Messina alongside Marguerite Yourcenar, Mary Renault and Mari Mori, women who wove novels about the passions of men. The reviewer describes this novel as one "long variation on the theme ["each man kills the thing he loves"], presented as a fable.... We find in this little marvel, by turns, the abstract and conceptual tone of a moralist and the provocative fantasy of a sly storyteller."

About this title

From the Back Cover:

Annie Messina brings her readers into a world of love, treachery, and intrigue, of scented gardens and splashing fountains straight from A Thousand and One Nights.

In 1981 Messina took the pseudonym Gamla Ghli, fearing the uproar this novel would cause, and leaving it to her friend, Leonardo Sciascia, to introduce Ghli to the Italian reading public. Annie Messina brings both her Sicilian heritage and her years of living in Egypt to bear on this orientalizing fiction.

A review of The Myrtle and the Rose in Le Monde places Messina alongside Marguerite Yourcenar, Mary Renault and Mari Mori, women who wove novels about the passions of men.

About the Author:

Annie Messina was the daughter of an Italian consul general in Egypt, and lived much of her life in that country, studied art, worked as a translator and, like her aunt (Maria Messina, 1887-1944), never married. Her literary output is small. Three works were published under her own name in with modest success: The Wedding Journey of Maria Isabel, Chronicles of the Nile, and The Magic Potion. The Myrtle and the Rose (1982) and its sequel La Palm of Rusafa (1989) were published under her pseudonym Gamla Ghli. Annie Messina died in Rome on February 27, 1996.

About this edition

• Publisher: Italica Press
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0934977453
• ISBN 13: 9780934977456
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 160