Sardinia

by Sara Alexander

(1379)

Set against the beautiful backdrop of post-World War II Sardinia, Sara Alexander’s evocative novel is a sweeping story of star-crossed romance between an American lieutenant and a local girl.

Sometimes a family’s deepest silences hide the most important secrets. For Mina, a London-based travel writer, the enigmatic silence surrounding her aunt Carmela has become a personal obsession. Carmela disappeared from her Italian hometown long ago and is mentioned only in fragments and whispers. Mina has resisted prying, respectful of her family’s Sardinian reserve. But now, with her mother battling cancer, it’s time to learn the truth.

In 1952, Simius is a busy Sardinian town surrounded by fertile farms and orchards. Carmela Chirigoni, a farmer’s daughter and talented seamstress, is engaged to Franco, son of the area’s wealthiest family. Everyone agrees it’s a good match. But Carmela’s growing doubts about Franco’s possessiveness are magnified when she meets Captain Joe Kavanagh. Joe, an American officer stationed at a local army base, is charismatic, intelligent, and married. Hired as his interpreter, Carmela resolves to ignore her feelings, knowing that any future together must bring upheaval and heartache to both families.

As Mina follows the threads of Carmela’s life to uncover her fate, she will discover a past still deeply alive in the present, revealing a story of hope, sacrifice, and extraordinary love.

by Salvatore Satta, Patrick Creagh (Translator)

(3)

Slowly, from cobbled path to pastureland to overarching mountain, the ancient town of Nuoro in Sardinia emerges as the chief player in this singular, profoundly intelligent, superbly translated novel. If one man can be said to stand taller than the rest, it is Don Sebastiano, the notary, who, though he has labored hard for 50 years amassing vineyards, wheat fields and oil presses, is not rich, because “only the cemetery is rich.” And indeed as each of his seven sons leaves the town for the university, seeking money, fame, status, Sebastiano mocks their search for “bread made of something better than wheat.” For he knows that even if they don’t remain in Nuoro, the town will remain in them, as it has in all the peasants, shepherds and landowners who figure in the narrative, whose sorrows, grudges and centuries-old habits distinguish them so precisely that the reader can hear their voices. A tenuous yet shattering plot, generated by the hatred of schoolteacher Don Ricciotti for Don Sebastiano, takes shape toward the end. Ricciotti galvanizes the countryside, forms a new political party, stands for election, charges Sebastiano with murder. This wise and glowing novel has been widely read in Europe since its publication in 1979.

by A. Colin Wright

(4)

To Arthur Fraser, a young Englishman, Sardinia in 1960 is perfect. It’s an island filled with Roman ruins, exotic scenery, local customs, and morally traditional values-he loves everything. To assimilate into the strange and belong to a society different from his own has always been his desire. Arthur arrives in the resort town of Alghero to work as a representative for a tourist company. His ambition is to find a Sard girl for himself. He is quickly thwarted, though, by the orthodox beliefs of the inhabitants. Unmarried couples cannot meet without chaperones, and anyone with “continental” attitudes is immoral. Arthur quickly learns that dating is fraught with real dangers. When Arthur finally falls in love with Anna, a Sard girl, he discovers that she lives in Rome and is no longer accepted at home. But she then falls in love with one of his best friends, and Arthur becomes irrationally obsessed. He incessantly schemes about winning back her affections, despite her efforts to dissuade him. In Sardinian Silver, author Wright masterfully evokes a mysterious society, its flamboyant people, and the Island’s beauty. Like Arthur, you’ll never want to leave Sardinia, with its wide sands, low hills, sun, and blue sea and its superficial pleasantness of life.