The Seamstress Of Sardinia

Author : Bianca Pitzorno
Publisher : HarperCollins
ISBN 13 : 0063271702
Total Pages : 238 pages
Book Rating : 4.08/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Seamstress of Sardinia written by Bianca Pitzorno and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2022-12-06 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A bestselling Italian writer makes her American debut with this delightful dramedy of manners, family, romance, and fashion that is set on the island of Sardinia at the end of the nineteenth century—a dazzling and original literary blend of Jane Austen and Adriana Trigiani. In 1900 Sardinia, a young woman’s remarkable talent with a needle earns her a position as a seamstress with a wealthy family. Inside this privileged world far different from her own humble beginnings, the skilled sewer quietly takes measurements, sketches designs, mends hems—and in the silence, hears whispered secrets and stories of all those around her. Through the watchful young seamstress’s eyes, this small Italian city and its residents emerge in all their vitality, vanity, and fragility—flawed yet congenial people who are not quite what they pretend to be. There is the Marchesa Esther, who rides horses and studies mechanics and ancient Greek; Miss Lily Rose, a spirited American journalist who commissions a special corset—with pockets to hide more than just her flaws; the Provera sisters with their expensive Parisian fashions that belie their financial hardships; and Assuntina, the wild child. There are men, young, old, and in between; love affairs and broken hearts; and even a murder (or was it suicide?). And at the center, watching and waiting is the seamstress herself, an intelligent, ambitious girl with a tender heart and her own impossible dream. An irresistible literary confection rich in atmosphere and period detail and packed with compelling characters. The Seamstress of Sardinia transports us to a long-ago world not so removed from our own—to a society rigidly divided by wealth and shaped by passion, hope, ambition, and love—the elemental forces that drive human lives.

Author : Frances de Pontes Peebles
Publisher : A&C Black
ISBN 13 : 1408816954
Total Pages : 754 pages
Book Rating : 4.50/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Seamstress written by Frances de Pontes Peebles and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2011-06-01 with total page 754 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Emília and Luzia dos Santos, orphaned when they are children, grow up under the protection of their aunt in the hillside village of Taquaritinga, Brazil. Raised as seamstresses, the sisters learn how to cut, how to mend and how to conceal. Emília treasures pretty, girlish things and longs to escape from the confines of the little town. Captivated by the romances she reads in magazines, she dreams of finding love in the bustle and glamour of the city. Luzia, scarred by a childhood accident that has left her with a deformed arm, knows that for her, real life can not be romantically embroidered, and so she finds solace in her sewing and in the secret prayers to the saints she believes once saved her life. But when Luzia is abducted by a gang of rebel bandits, the sisters' lives diverge in ways they never imagined. Whilst Luzia learns to survive in the unforgiving Brazilian outland, discovering love in the most unexpected of places, Emília meets the son of a wealthy doctor who seems to offer her everything she has always desired. But for the innocent dreamer, the excitement of her escape to the city is soon overshadowed by disillusion and loneliness. As she learns how to navigate the treacherous waters of Brazilian high society, the bandits' campaign against the land-owning 'Colonels' intensifies, and when a price is placed upon Luzia's head Emília realises she must risk everything in order to save her sister.

Author : Grazia Deledda
Publisher : State University of New York Press
ISBN 13 : 0791488187
Total Pages : 183 pages
Book Rating : 4.88/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Church of Solitude written by Grazia Deledda and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2012-02-01 with total page 183 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Church of Solitude tells the story of Maria Concezione, a young Sardinian seamstress living with breast cancer at the cusp of the twentieth century. Overwhelmed by the shame of her diagnosis, she decides that no one can know what has happened to her, but the heavy burden of this secrecy changes her life in dramatic ways and almost causes the destruction of several people in her life. This surprising novel paints the portrait of a woman facing the unknown with courage, faith, and self-reliance, and is the last and most autobiographical work of Grazia Deledda, who died of breast cancer in 1936, shortly after its publication. An afterword by the translator offers additional information on the author and examines the social and historical environment of that time.

Author : Peter Collier
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780521362061
Total Pages : 202 pages
Book Rating : 4.67/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Proust and Venice written by Peter Collier and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1989-10-26 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study of Proust's famous novel A la recherche du temps perdu (Remembrance of Things Past) focuses on Venice, one of the hero's central obsessions, and shows how a whole network of allusions to art (from Titian to Turner, from Byzantine mosaic to Fortuny dresses) ties in with the hero's quest for self-knowledge and self-fulfilment.

Author : Edward Burman
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1786725991
Total Pages : 337 pages
Book Rating : 4.98/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Sardinia written by Edward Burman and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2019-06-13 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An exploration of Sardinia's incredibly rich history and culture, which stretches back to the Neolithic period. This book details everyone from the Phoenicians to the Carthaginians and Aragonese who invaded Sardinia, which is covered with some of the most fascinating historical and archaeological sites in Europe – from thousands of nuraghi, Bronze Age towers and settlements, to 'giant's grave' and 'fairy house' tombs. It also holds eccentric festivals, from Barbagia's carnival parade of ghoulish mamuthones, said to banish winter demons, to the death-defying S'Ardia horse race in Sedilo. There are shipwrecks off Cagliari's coast, underwater caves and submerged Roman ruins in addition to ancient castles, churches, undisturbed hilltop villages and 2,000 miles of some of the most beautiful coastline in the world.

Author : Marco Vichi
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 1639360298
Total Pages : 464 pages
Book Rating : 4.91/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Death in Sardinia written by Marco Vichi and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2021-11-15 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: SHORTLISTED FOR THE CRIME WRITERS' ASSOCIATION INTERNATIONAL DAGGER 2013. Florence, 1965. A man is found murdered, a pair of scissors stuck through his throat. Only one thing is known about him - he was a loan shark, who ruined and blackmailed the vulnerable men and women who would come to him for help. Inspector Bordelli prepares to launch a murder investigation. But the case will be a tough one for him, arousing mixed emotions: the desire for justice conflicting with a deep hostility for the victim. And he is missing his young police sidekick, Piras, who is convalescing at his parents' home in Sardinia. But Piras hasn't been recuperating for long before he too has a mysterious death to deal with . . .

Author : Michela Murgia
Publisher : Catapult
ISBN 13 : 1619021331
Total Pages : 115 pages
Book Rating : 4.34/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Accabadora written by Michela Murgia and published by Catapult. This book was released on 2012-10-30 with total page 115 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The award winning Accabadora is an exceptional English–language debut, written with intriguing subtlety reflecting a sensual picture of local Italian life and death in villages during the 1950's. A time where family ties and obligations still decide much of life's ebb and flow. A must read for those who love a touch of the unusual. Formerly beautiful and at one time betrothed to a fallen soldier, Bonaria Urrai has a long held covenant with the dead. Midwife to the dying, easing their suffering and sometimes ending it, she is revered and feared in equal measure as the village's Accabadora. When Bonaria adopts Maria, the unloved fourth child of a widow, she tries to shield the girl from the truth about her role as an angel of mercy. Moved by the pleas of a young man crippled in an accident, she breaks her golden rule of familial consent, and in the recriminations that follow, Maria rejects her and flees Sardinia for Turin. Adrift in the big city, Maria strives as ever to find love and acceptance, but her efforts are overshadowed by the creeping knowledge of a debt unpaid, of a duty and destiny that must one day be hers. Accabadora has been awarded seven major literary prizes, including Italy's prestigious Premio Campiello.

Author : Sara Alexander
Publisher : HarperCollins UK
ISBN 13 : 0008217270
Total Pages : 400 pages
Book Rating : 4.73/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Under a Sardinian Sky written by Sara Alexander and published by HarperCollins UK. This book was released on 2017-04-20 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sometimes a family’s deepest silences hide the most important secrets.

Author : Bianca Pitzorno
Publisher : Alma Books
ISBN 13 : 9781846884108
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.01/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The House in the Tree written by Bianca Pitzorno and published by Alma Books. This book was released on 2017-07-11 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: All children dream of having a secret house where they can live on their own, far from any rules and regulations. But not all of them are as lucky as Aglaia, who lives at the top of a magical tree together with her friend Bianca and an incredible host of flying dogs, talking cats, carnivorous flowers and children who speak in verse. Inventively illustrated by Quentin Blake, Aglaia's adventures – and her battles with the gruff Signor Brullo and the woodmen who want to cut down the tree – are sure to enchant and inspire the imagination of every child.

Author : Alan Grostephan
Publisher : Northwestern University Press
ISBN 13 : 0810152304
Total Pages : 241 pages
Book Rating : 4.04/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Bogotá written by Alan Grostephan and published by Northwestern University Press. This book was released on 2013-06-30 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Bogotá, a taut, moving novel set in present-day Colombia, Wilfredo decides to uproot his family from their small town, where his ferry service on the river subjects him to the gruesome errands demanded by the local paramilitary. Moving in with relatives in a slum in Bogotá, the family tries desperately to achieve the smallest measure of comfort and hope in a world of almost total ruin, wracked by deprivation, fear, and ceaseless violence. Alan Grostephan depicts with startling immediacy an urban landscape of extreme harshness and oppressive instability. The tension between the desperate conditions surrounding his characters and their efforts to hold on to their humanity gives Bogotá a ferocious energy. As Wilfredo and his family fight to stay alive and stay together, their plight emerges as equally enraging and uplifting, constituting a portrait of a society always on the verge of disintegration.