The Garden of the Finzi-Continis

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Giorgio Bassani

Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York, 1977; originally published in 1962 in Italian, English

Fiction

ISBN: 9780156345705

From the Publisher. The Finzi-Continis are an aristocratic Jewish family who live an insular life behind the walls of their estate in the northern Italian city of Ferrera. The narrator, a young middle-class Jew, has been intrigued by the Finzi-Continis from boyhood and especially by the two children, Alberto and Micol. Not until he is twenty-two, in the autumn of 1938, is he invited to enter their private world, a place seemingly immune from the racial laws of Fascist Italy. Thirteen years after the war, he traces his intricate relationship with the beautiful Micol and shares the predicament of all of the Ferrarese Jews on the eve of their destruction. Critically acclaimed and award-winning, The Garden of the Finzi Continis is an unforgettable, wrenching novel that re-creates a tragic era in history.

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Emanuela Frattini Magnusson

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The story of an aristocratic Jewish family living in Ferrara during the time of Fascism. Reading it is full-immersion—masterful writing becomes a visual experience.

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