Cosima

Publisher Marketing: "Cosima" tells the story of an aspiring writer growing up in Nuoro, Sardinia during the last decades of the nineteenth century when formal education for women was rare and literary careers unheard-of. Based on Deledda's own life, the work describes a young woman's struggle against the dismay and disapproval of her family and friends at her creative ambitions. Yet it also reads like a charming fable with details of family life, rural traditions and wild bandits, and it is as much a novel of memory as of character or action. Deledda's characters are poor country folk driven by some predetermined force. Their loves are tragic, their lives as hard and as rigidly controlled as nature itself in the hills of Sardinia. Deledda creates memorable figures who play out their lives against this backdrop of mountains and bare plains, sheepfolds and vineyards. Shimmering in the distance is the sea and escape - for a few - to the Continent or America. In 1926 Grazia Deledda became the second woman and the second Italian to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature. She wrote thirty-three novels, including "Reeds in the Wind," and many books of short stories, almost all set on Sardinia. Her work has become well known to English-speaking readers through Martha King's translations for Italica Press. Contributor Bio:  Deledda, Grazia Honore de Balzac (Tours, 20 maggio 1799 - Parigi, 18 agosto 1850) e stato uno scrittore, drammaturgo, critico letterario, saggista, giornalista e stampatore francese, considerato fra i maggiori della sua epoca. E considerato il principale maestro del romanzo realista francese del XIX secolo. Scrittore prolifico, ha elaborato un'opera monumentale - la Commedia umana - ciclo di numerosi romanzi e racconti che hanno l'obiettivo di descrivere in modo quasi esaustivo la societa francese contemporanea all'autore o, come ha detto piu volte l'autore stesso, di "fare concorrenza allo stato civile." La veridicita di quest'opera colossale ha portato Friedrich Engels a dichiarare di aver imparato piu dal "reazionario" Balzac che da tutti gli economisti. Di grande influenza (da Flaubert a Zola, fino a Proust e a Giono, tanto per restare in Francia), la sua opera e stata anche utilizzata per moltissimi film e telefilm. Maria Grazia Cosima Deledda (Nuoro, 27 settembre 1871 - Roma, 15 agosto 1936) e stata una scrittrice italiana, vincitrice del Premio Nobel per la letteratura nel 1926.