Overview

An NYRB Classics Original The Communist is the story of a life lived in the service of a faith and what happens when that faith is lost. Walter Ferranini, a child of Italy's agricultural heartland, begins as an earnest autodidact who works as a labor organizer before being driven, under Mussolini, into exile in the United States, the belly of the capitalist beast. After World War II, he returns to Italy and enters parliament as a communist MP. Then Khrushchev's 1956 denunciation of Stalin's crimes leads to a crisis in Walter's life. He has come to question that most basic communist belief, that human life finds its fulfillment in labor, and he writes an article expressing his doubts. It is a scandal, as, in the eyes of the prudish party elders, is his new relationship with Nuccia, a journalist who is a married woman. Under these circumstances, Walter is invited for the first time to visit the Soviet Union, and there he finds himself bewildered beyond words. In The Communist, Guido Morselli portrays a man of conviction cast adrift with deep and compelling sympathy.

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9781681370781

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Morselli's novels...are serious social studies.... The uncanny, matter-of-fact depictions...give an eerie feeling of something utterly impossible becoming all-too-plausible.... Why works of such calibre went unpublished remains a mystery...his works simply remain there to be appreciated. --Nicola Rossi, complete review Quarterly [Morselli's] best-laid schemes of mice and monarchs are presided over by a cool and witty intellect. --Christopher Wordsworth, The Guardian Morselli possessed the pure visionary's exactness and constructive ability; each time he chose a subject, he punctiliously documented himself thereabout...an isolated experimenter.... He could prophetically interpret history as in Il Comunista or reverse it, with a good deal of fantastic inventiveness. --Alfredo Giuliani, Literary Review Morselli [was] a master of irony and a deft juggler of tenses. --Annapaola Cancogni, The New York Times

Morselli s novels...are serious social studies.... The uncanny, matter-of-fact depictions...give an eerie feeling of something utterly impossible becoming all-too-plausible.... Why works of such calibre went unpublished remains a mystery...his works simply remain there to be appreciated. Nicola Rossi, <i>complete review Quarterly</i> [Morselli s] best-laid schemes of mice and monarchs are presided over by a cool and witty intellect. Christopher Wordsworth, <i>The Guardian</i> Morselli possessed the pure visionary s exactness and constructive ability; each time he chose a subject, he punctiliously documented himself thereabout...an isolated experimenter.... He could prophetically interpret history as in <i>Il Comunista</i> or reverse it, with a good deal of fantastic inventiveness. Alfredo Giuliani, <i>Literary Review</i> Morselli [was] a master of irony and a deft juggler of tenses. Annapaola Cancogni, <i>The New York Times</i>

Author Information

Guido Morselli (1912-1973) was a novelist and essayist. Born in Bologna, he earned a law degree, served in the Italian army, and traveled abroad, writing reportage and short stories. After the war he completed eight works of fiction, includingPast Conditional,Divertimento 1889, andRoma senza papa('Rome sans Pope'), none of them published in his lifetime, as well as a volume on Proust and one on faith and criticism. At 60, discouraged by his failure to find a publisher, he committed suicide. The following year, his novels began to come out to much acclaim. Frederika Randall is a writer and translator of Italian literature. Her translations include Luigi Meneghello'sDeliver Us, Sergio Luzzatto'sThe Body of Il Duce, Padre Pio, and Primo Levi's Resistance, as well as Ippolito Nievo'sRisorgimento novel Confessions of an Italian. She has been awarded a Bogliasco Fellowship, a PEN/Heim grant, and, along with Sergio Luzzatto, the Cundill Prize. She lives in Rome. Elizabeth McKenzie is the author of The Portable Veblen, published byPenguin Press and 4th Estate. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, Best American Nonrequired Reading, and the Pushcart Prize Anthology, and recorded for NPR's Selected Shorts.Her collection, Stop That Girl, was short-listed for The Story Prize, and her novel MacGregor Tells the World was a Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle and Library Journal Best Book of the year. She is the senior editor of the Chicago Quarterly Review and the managing editor of Catamaran Literary Reader.

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