Volume 2, Number 3 · March 19, 1964
Two Italys
By Bernard Wall
An Arid Heart
by Carlo Cassola, translated by William Weaver
Pantheon, 219 pp., $4.95
Mafia Vendetta
by Leonardo Sciascia, translated by Archbald Colquhoun
Knoph, 122 pp., $3.95
If anyone wanted a proof that still today there are two Italys, the Italy of the automobile and the Italy of the donkey, he could do no better than read these novels together. Cassola writes about the north, the 'middle-class' life of a calm, pleasure-seeking society; Sciascia about Sicily which is like the Roman campagna of a hundred years ago as Stendhal described it, a haunting opera land of passions and baroque lies that seems half oriental.
Review, 1157 words
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