For the series EMPATHY & LONELINESS IN CONTEMPORARY ITALIAN LITERATURE | Book club, fourth of six lectures by Shirley Finzi Loew concerning individuals & society in Contemporary Italian Literature.
Premio Strega 2002. Called to the hospital when his fifteen-year-old daughter, Angela, is injured in a potentially fatal accident, a prominent surgeon sits and waits, silently confessing the affair he had the year Angela was born. As Timoteo’s tale begins, he’s driving to the beach house where his beautiful, accomplished wife, Elsa, is waiting. Car trouble forces him to make a detour into a dingy suburb, where he meets Italia – unattractive, unpolished, working-class – who awakens a part of him he scarcely recognizes. Disenchanted with his stable life, he seizes the chance to act without consequences, and their savage first encounter spirals into an inexplicable obsession. Returning again and again to Italia’s dim hovel, he finds himself faced with a choice: a life of passion with Italia, or a life of comfort and predictability with Elsa. As Angela’s life hangs in the balance, Timoteo’s own life flashes before his eyes, this time seen through the lens of the one time he truly lived.
- The six lectures are a series. It is required to subscribe and pay a symbolic fee of 40 NIS/lecture. 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 17:45.
Monday, February 5th 2018, at 18:00
Italian Cultural Institute in Haifa
Rehov Meir Rutberg 12 – Haifa
Reservation no longer available