In the fifth book of the Romanzo di Ferrara, Bassani follows a day in the slipping life of Edgardo Limentani, a man of forty-five who sets out with a shooting party into the watery countryside surrounding Ferrara. As the day wears on, his malaise grows, seeping from his thoughts and feelings into the natural world around him, until it reaches an intolerable pitch. This taut depiction of one man's reckoning with his unfulfilling life evokes in cinematic detail how inescapable loneliness turns to despair.
Author Biography
Giorgio Bassani was born in 1916. From 1938 onwards he became involved in various anti-fascist activities for which he was imprisoned in 1943. His works include The Gold-Rimmed Spectacles, and Five Stories of Ferrara (Within the Walls), which won the Strega Prize. The Garden of the Finzi-Continis was awarded the Viareggio Prize in 1962 and was made into a feature film.
