Materada / Fulvio Tomizza ; translated from the Italian and with a foreword by Russell Scott Valentino.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Tomizza, Fulvio, 1935-1999.

Contributor:

Valentino, Russell Scott, 1962-

Series:

Writings from an unbound Europe

Standardized Title:

Materada. English

Language:

English

Italian

Subjects (All):

Materada (Croatia)--History--Fiction.

Materada (Croatia).

Genre:

Fiction.

Physical Description:

xiv, 134 pages ; 21 cm.

Place of Publication:

Evanston, Ill. : Northwestern University Press, 2000.

Summary:

Francesco Koslovic -- even his name straddles two cultures. And in the spring of 1955, in the village of Materada on the Istrian Peninsula, the two worlds of Francesco Koslovic are coming apart. A novel both lyrical and elegiac, Materada unfolds against the backdrop of the Istrian "exodus" -- the departure from their homeland of hundreds of thousands who had once thrived in the peninsula's rich ethnic mixture of Italian and Slav, Croat and Slovene. Complicating -- and hastening -- Koslovic's own departure is his vain attempt to keep land that he and his brother have worked all their lives.

As Koslovic narrates the events leading up to his family's displacement -- and the feud that divides the family itself -- he brings a rare immediacy to the questions of ethnic identity that have rolled Central Europe in the twentieth century. A picture of a disappearing way of life, imbued with love for the tastes and tales and songs of his native Istria, Koslovic's story is also a testament to the inextricably intertwined ethnic roots of Balkan history.

ISBN:

0810117584

0810117592

OCLC:

42717769