Novel
The Garden of the Finzi-Continis
Il giardino dei Finzi-Contini
Giorgio Bassani · 1962
Synopsis
In Ferrara, in 1929, the narrator, a Jewish boy from the middle class who has just failed mathematics, meets Micòl Finzi-Contini, daughter of a wealthy Jewish family of the city, at the wall of their large garden. Nine years later, the racial laws having excluded him from his tennis club, he is invited with other young people to play on the Finzi-Contini court. He becomes close to Micòl and her brother Alberto, frequents the house and falls in love with the girl.
Context
The novel appeared from Einaudi in 1962 and received the Viareggio Prize the same year. It opens on a Sunday in April 1957, during a visit to the Etruscan necropolis of Cerveteri, which decides the narrator to write the story of the Finzi-Continis. Michel Arnaud translated it into French for Gallimard under the title “Le Jardin des Finzi-Contini”; into English, Isabel Quigly, William Weaver and then Jamie McKendrick translated it under the title “The Garden of the Finzi-Continis”.
Who it is for
A short novel, written in the first person, in which the narrator's memory returns to his youth in Ferrara.
Prizes and reception
Vittorio De Sica's 1970 adaptation received the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film and the Golden Bear.
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