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The Silent Duchess
The Silent Duchess
The Silent Duchess
Ebook384 pages11 hours

The Silent Duchess

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

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The stunning English translation of the International Man Booker Prize Finalist novel hailed as “a story of grace and endurance, not mere survival” (The New York Times Book Review).
 
Winner of the Premio Campiello, short-listed for the Independent Foreign Fiction Award, and published to critical acclaim in fourteen languages, this “spellbinding” historical novel by one of Italy’s premier authors is now available in this luminous new translation (Booklist).
 
In early 18th century Sicily, noblewoman Marianna Ucrìa is trapped in a world of silence after a terrible childhood trauma left her deaf and mute. Married off to a lecherous uncle, she struggles to educate and elevate herself against all convention—and find her true place in a world that sees her as little more than property.
 
In language that conveys the keen vision and deep human insight possessed by her protagonist, Dacia Maraini captures the splendor and the corruption of Marianna’s world, as well as the strength of her unbreakable spirit, in “one of those rare, rich, deep, strange novels that create a world so fantastic and so real you want to start reading it again as soon as you come to the last page” (Newsday).
LanguageEnglish
Release dateJan 1, 2000
ISBN9781558617834
The Silent Duchess

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Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
3.5/5

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  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Hugely evocative of its time and place in eighteenth century Sicily, [The Silent Duchess] paints a picture of a decadent and lethargic aristocracy to whom conspicuous consumption and display is far more important than the fact that their estates are going to rack and ruin. A world where beautiful daughters are married at twelve and are considered to be old maids at eighteen, while less favoured ones are destined for the convent despite the absence of any heightened religious conviction; where a woman can look old at twenty-three, worn out with successive pregnancies; and a woman of forty-five should be 'preparing her soul for the beyond rather than looking for new friendships'. Where superstitions are rife and children must seriously beware of dogs as 'their tails grow so long that they wrap themselves round people's waists like chimeras do and then, hey presto, they pierce you without ever realising what has happened to you. This is the world of Marianna Ucria, youngest daughter of a Sicilian Duke; profoundly deaf and unable to speak, she communicates with her family by writing notes and despite her father telling her that she has been deaf since birth she retains residual memories of hearing sounds. Marianna is introduced at age seven, as she follows her father as he officiates at the execution of a brigand scarcely more than a child himself, to which she has been taken in the hope that the shock may jolt her out of her speechlessness. At age thirteen she is married to her uncle, which as her mother says, 'is a saving of fifteen thousand escudos' over the dowry that a convent would require to take her. The book follows Marianna through key periods of her life, as her children are born, are married and have children of their own. Separated from her society and family by her disability she reads widely and thinks for herself, which serves to set her even further apart.Recommended to anyone who has enjoyed [The Leopard] although set a hundred years or so earlier [The Last Duchess] is without the same sense of the ending of a way of life.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Sometimes long winded. Never really a story but just a report.

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The Silent Duchess - Dacia Maraini

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