For the series THE SEASONS OF LIFE IN CONTEMPORARY ITALIAN LITERATURE | Book club, first out of nine lectures/conversations by Shirley Finzi Loew concerning childhood, adolescence, love, motherhood, professional fulfillment and old age according to contemporary Italian writers. Event held in Hebrew. FREE ADMISSION, subject to mandatory reservation @ the bottom of this page.
This is a story told by a boy in his thirteenth year, recorded in his secret diary. His life is about to change; his world, about to open.
He lives in Montedidio—God’s Mountain—a cluster of alleys in the heart of Naples. He brings a paycheck home every Saturday from Mast’Errico’s carpentry workshop where he sweeps the floor. He is on his way to becoming a man—his boy’s voice is abandoning him. His wooden boomerang is neither toy nor tool, but something in between. Then there is Maria, the thirteen-year-old girl who lives above him and, like so many girls, is wiser than he. She carries the burden of a secret life herself. She’ll speak to him for the first time this summer. There is also his friendship with a cobbler named Rafaniello, a Jewish refugee who has escaped the horrors of the Holocaust, who has no idea how long he’s been on this earth, and who is said to sprout wings for a blessed few.
It is 1963, a young man’s summer of discovery. A time for a boy with innocent hands and a pure heart to look beyond the ordinary in everyday things to see the far-reaching landscape, and all of its possibilities, from a rooftop terrace on God’s Mountain.
- The nine lectures are a series. Mandatory FREE registration @ the bottom of this page. For further information, please contact the Italian Cultural Institute of Haifa at 04-8536091.
- Participants are invited to read the novel in Hebrew or in the original language before each lecture.
Shirley Finzi Loew graduated in Computer Engineering (Technion). After making a career in the computer industry, she moved to literature. She graduated in comparative literature (University of Haifa) with a thesis on Elsa Morante’s novels and has been working as translator from Italian into Hebrew since then.
Event held in Hebrew.
Refreshments from 18:15.
Monday, October 28t, 2019, at 18:30
Italian Cultural Institute in Haifa
Rehov Meir Rutberg 12 – Haifa
FREE ADMISSION, subject to mandatory reservation @ the bottom of this page.
Reservation no longer available