Novel
Boys Alive
Ragazzi di vita
Pier Paolo Pasolini · 1955
Synopsis
Rome, at the end of the forties, in the borgate, the outlying suburbs. Adolescents, the most prominent of whom is Riccetto, live from day to day on petty thefts, schemes and makeshift shifts, sometimes on prostitution, among the rubble, the mud and the factories, and pass through prison. The book does not follow a single plot but a series of linked episodes, each with its own title, and the boys speak in it in the Roman dialect.
Context
The novel appeared with Garzanti in May 1955. Prosecuted for obscenity, it earned its author a trial that ended in 1956 with an acquittal, Giuseppe Ungaretti and Carlo Bo having come to his defence. The book made the borgate a place of Italian literature. The book appeared in French under the title “Les Ragazzi”, and Jean-Paul Manganaro retranslated it under the same title in 2016; in English, after “The Ragazzi” and “The Street Kids”, Tim Parks translated it in 2023 under the title “Boys Alive”.
Who it is for
A short book, made up of episodes that can be read separately, whose dialogues are written in Roman dialect.
Prizes and reception
According to New York Review Books, the book, long censored, remains its author's best-known work of fiction.
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