Elias Portolu

by Grazia Deledda

Book Overview

Winner of the 1926 Novel Prize for Literature

After serving time in mainland Italy for a minor theft, Elias Portolu returns home to Nuoro, in rural Sardinia. Lonely and vulnerable after his prison exile, he falls in love with his brother's fianc?e. But he finds himself trapped by social and religious strictures, his passion and guilt winding into a spiral of anguish and paralyzing indecision. For guidance he turns first to the village priest,...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0810112515
• ISBN13: 9780810112513
• Release Date: May 1995
• Publisher: Northwestern University Press
• Length: 194 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.2" x 7.7"

Customer Reviews

Temptation and sin

Elias Portolu is a Sardinian peasant who has done time in jail, in Italy. One day he returns to the island, a few weeks before his brother gets married. Trouble begins when Elias starts to fall in love with his brother's fiancee. Being a loyal brother, he resists the temptation, and when it gets stronger, Elias leaves his home and goes to another village. But, as Goethe proved in "Elective affinities", love is not something we can control or decide, and so the story proceeds...Grazia Deledda, a Nobel-Prize winner, has written a novel of great tension. No good nor bad guys here: just human beings with difficult lives, in possession of moral values as well as human weaknesses. Worth reading.