Books
by Dacia Maraina
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The Silent Duchess |
18th century Sicily and deaf-mute Marianna grows up to be married at thirteen to her elderly uncle. In a series of scenes from her life we feel, smell, see the Sicily of the times, its cruelty, prejudice, condemning of women to child-bearing or the cloister, interweaving of dynasties with their intractable priorities, the background poverty and struggle. But also the uncrushable human aspirations and the beauty . . . I lived inside this sensitively translated mini-masterpiece, utterly captivated.
(Annabel Bedini - bwl 73 Summer 2014) |
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