Originariamente inviata da mila
scusatemi ancora...
qualcuno è in grado di tradurmi almeno uno di questi?
The fact that Irene Beltrán came from a wealthy bourgeois family did not prevent Francisco Leal, a young photographer secretly engaged in undermining the military dictatorship, from being strongly attracted by her beauty. It did not matter that her fiancé, Gustavo Morante, the “Bridegroom of Death”, was an army Captain; each time Francisco accompanied her on a magazine assignment he fell more deeply in love with her.
When they went to investigate the mysterious case of Evangelina Ranquileo, a girl suffering from spectacular fits which were rumoured to have miraculous powers, there did not seem to be any cause for concern. Then the soldiers' arrival brought mayhem in its wake. Evangelina's subsequent disappearance deepened the mystery. The enterprising pair, in attempting to trace her and indict the Junta, became engulfed in a vortex of terror and violence.
Set in an atmosphere of pervading uncertainty and fear, in a country of arbitrary arrests, sudden disappearances and summary executions, Isabel Allende's second novel tells of the passionate affair of two people prepared to risk everything for the sake of justice and truth. The grim reality of overcrowded morgues and mass graves is contrasted with the colourful landscape of South America. Here are boldly drawn characters, such as Irene's wilfully ignorant, decadent mother, Francisco's impulsive, foolhardy father (a Spanish Professor in exile), and Mario, a homosexual celebrity and fearless subversive - who experience the joys and sorrows of a country where anything can happen: a convention of frogs, free meat distributed by a “Philanthropic Butchershop”, a baby born by falling through the skylight.
As in The House of the Spirits Isabel Allende here reveals an awesome power of story-letting. Love and Shadows unfolds a riveting tale of tragedy and ecstasy, of bravery and sacrifice, of family loyalty and state betrayal that is both profoundly moving and uplifting.
oppure questo:
A best seller and critical success in Europe and Latin America, The House of the Spirits is the magnificent epic of the Trueba family - their loves, their ambitions, their spiritual quests, their relations with one another, and their participation in the history of their times, a history that becomes destiny and overtakes them all.
We begin - at the turn of the century, in an unnamed South American country - in the childhood home of the woman who will be the mother and grandmother of the clan, Clara del Valle. A warm-hearted, hypersensitive girl, Clara has distinguished herself from an early age with her telepathic abilities - she can read fortunes, make objects move as if they had lives of their own, and predict the future. Following the mysterious death of her sister, the fabled Rosa the Beautiful, Clara has been mute for nine years, resisting all attempts to make her speak. When she breaks her silence, it is to announce that she will be married soon.
Her husband-to-be is Esteban Trueba, a stern, willful man, given to fits of rage and haunted by a profound loneliness. At the age of thirty-five, he has returned to the capital from his country estate to visit his dying mother and to find a wife. (He was Rosa's fiancé, and her death has marked him as deeply as it has Clara.) This is the man Clara has foreseen - has summoned - to be her husband; Esteban, in turn, will conceive a passion for Clara that will last the rest of his long and rancorous life.
We go with this couple as they move into the extravagant house he builds for her, a structure that everyone calls “the big house on the corner,” which is soon populated with Clara's spiritualist friends, the artists she sponsors, the charity cases she takes an interest in, with Esteban's political cronies, and, above all, with the Trueba children: Blanca, a practical, self-effacing girl who will, to the fury of her father, form a lifelong liaison with the son of his foreman, and the twins, Jaime and Nicolás, the former a solitary, taciturn boy who becomes a doctor to the poor and unfortunate; the latter a playboy, a dabbler in Eastern religions and mystical disciplines and, in the third generation, the child Alba, Blanca's daughter (the family does not recognize the real father for years, so great is Esteban's anger), a child who is fondled and indulged and instructed by them all.
For all their good fortune, their natural (and supernatural) talents, and their powerful attachments to one another, the inhabitants of “the big house on the corner” are not immune to the larger forces of the world. And, as the twentieth century beats on, as Esteban becomes more strident in his opposition to Communism, as Jaime becomes the friend and confidant of the Socialist leader known as the Candidate, as Alba falls in love with a student radical, the Truebas become actors - and victims - in a tragic series of events that gives The House of the Spirits a deeper resonance and meaning.
It is the supreme achievement of this splendid novel that we feel ourselves members of this large, passionate (and sometimes exasperating) family, that we become attached to them as if they were our own. That this is the author's first novel makes it all the more extraordinary. The House of the Spirits marks the appearance of a major, international writer.*
SCUSATE LA MIA IGNORANZA....