Vita

Title: Vita

Author: Melania G. Mazzucco

Binding: Paperback

EAN: 9789045850719

Condition: Good

Please note: Below is a general description of how we classify our condition types. If you would like a more precise picture or have specific questions, please send us a message and we will be happy to look into it for you.

Condition descriptions:
- As New: Hardly any signs of use, almost as new.
- Good: May show minor signs of use, such as some discoloration or a name on the endpapers, but generally no underlining or notes in the text.
- Fair: Book in fair condition. May show signs of use, such as discoloration, reading creases in spine, underlinings, notes, light soiling at edges, dog-ears, or a crooked spine.
- New: Book is new.

Description:
VITA, M. Mazzucco

New York, 1903. Two children from a hamlet in southern Italy disembark at Ellis Island:
Diamante, twelve, and Vita, only nine years old. He is silent, proud and fearless; she is impulsive, jealous and gifted with the mysterious ability to move objects.

In a chaotic boarding house in the Italian district downtown, the children are introduced to death and the alphabet, temptations, sex, betrayal and loyalty. They grow up to be adults, find each other and lose sight of each other. They keep hoping for a golden future that is in store for everyone in the land of unlimited possibilities. But their childhood dreams will not come true, not in New York, not for them together.

The novel Vita is picaresque and imaginative, but it is more than that. The two children really existed, as did the boarding house and the many characters that populate this fascinating story. In order to put them on paper, the author has reconnected the threads of family memories. Based on the stories of her father and an uncle, she has searched for documents and clues in newspapers from that time, in personal correspondence, police archives and the
passenger lists of the steamboats that brought the emigrants to New York.

Vita is sometimes funny, sometimes bitter, comical and sad, tender and cruel at the same time.