Book presentation and signing
Presented by the Italian Cultural Institute and Georgetown University.
With a labyrinthine narrative structure Magris’s novel Blindly recounts the history and geography of the twentieth century, its horrors, hopes, and revolutions.
The whirling monologue of its fictional protagonist, who impersonates illegal immigrants, partisans, and fugitives across widely different lands and seas, conjures up the sites of dramatic episodes – from Tito’s gulag on the Adriatic island of Goli Otok to the Nazi camps, from the Italo-Slavo-German territories of the eastern border of Italy to the war in Spain, from the Iceland of a grotesque revolution to the Australia of emigration. The protagonist’s journey through the oceans and shipwrecks of history resembles that of the Argonauts in search of the ever bloodstained Golden Fleece, emblematic of those banners that move to great enterprises and awful crimes, of which love, too, is the victim.
Copies of Blindly (Yale University Press, 2012) will be available for sale at the presentation. A book signing will follow.
RSVP
RSVP NOT REQUIRED – OPEN TO THE PUBLIC
LOCATION:
ICC Auditorium – Georgetown University
37th and O Streets NW
Washington, DC 20057
CLAUDIO MAGRIS
Italian scholar, novelist, journalist and cultural philosopher Claudio Magris is one of the most prominent European intellectuals. A professor of Modern German Literature at the University of Trieste, he has authored over forty books translated in numerous languages, among them his much acclaimed Danubio [Danube (1989)]; Microcosmi [Microcosms (1999)], the plays Stadelmann and Le voci [Voices. Three Plays (2007)], the theatrical monologue Lei dunque capirà [You Will Therefore Understand (2011)], and Alla cieca (2005) [Blindly (2012)].
He has translated into Italian works by Ibsen, Kleist, Schnitzler, Büchner, and Grillparzer, and is a columnist for the Italian newspaper Il Corriere della Sera as well as a contributor to numerous other European journals. A member of the most important European academies, he has been awarded honorary degrees and prestigious prizes such as the Erasmus Prize in 2001, the Prince of Asturias Prize in 2004, the Premio Viareggio Tobino in 2007, The Peace Prize of the German Book Trade in 2009, and, most recently, the “Premio ‘È giornalismo’ “(2012) and the Budapest Prize (2012).
ANTHOLOGY OF CRITICAL ESSAYS