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Alessandro Manzoni’s Farewell to Como
It’s no accident that Italy used to be many countries, as we discovered on a recent road trip around northern Italy. Even that subset of Italian landscapes is full of stunning contrasts. Mountains and sea and thousands of years of diverse horticulture create different environments wherever you go. The climate on the east of the Italian peninsula is drier and different to that on the west. The north is more influenced by the climate of the continent and the Alps. The south is bathed in Mediterranean waves and the Sirocco wind from the Sahara. Of course much is shared, and the swallows are certainly unfazed by such changes. For them…
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Alessandro Manzoni and the Betrothed (I Promessi Sposi)
Alessandro Manzoni is a talented story teller and a perceptive observer of character. His novel, the Betrothed (I Promessi Sposi) has been celebrated as a gem of Italian literature ever since its publication. It is readily available as a physical, ebook or audiobook (see below) and several movie and serial versions have been made. The novel’s main characters, Renzo and Lucia are in love and they are to be married. Yet achieving this happy and unexceptional outcome turns out to be far from easy in Lombardy of the 1600s in which the historical novel is set. Manzoni wrote his book in the early 1800s, two hundred years later, so we see a more…
