The Moon and the Bonfire

"The Moon and the Bonfire" is an English translation of the novel "La Luna e i Falò", by the Italian poet and novelist Cesare Pavese. The book was written in Italian in 1949. [Koffler, Richard, [http://www.jstor.org/stable/1344943 Review: The Essential Pavese,] NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction, Vol. 2, No. 3 (Spring, 1969), pp. 286-288.] It is considered Pavese's best novel. [ [http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/447291/Cesare-Pavese Cesare Pavese,] Encyclopædia Britannica Online.]

The first English language translation was undertaken by L Sinclair in 1952. A more recent translation by R.W. Flint, published in 2002, uses the arguably more correct translation of the "The Moon and the Bonfires", taking account of the use of the plural "i Falò" in the original Italian title. [ [http://www.nybooks.com/shop/product?product_id=882 The Moon and the Bonfires,] The New York Review of Books.]

The novel is set in the small town of Santo Stefano Belbo, in Piedmont, north-west Italy. The main protagonist, known only by his nickname of "Anguilla" (Eel), has returned to his home town in the years immediately following the Second World War. He had left just before the war, ostensibly for political reasons, and had made his fortune in the United States. Returning to his home town, he finds many of the same smells and sights that filled his youth, but he also finds a town and its inhabitants that have been deeply changed by war and by the passage of time.

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