Ernesto

Description

Ernesto is sixteen years old and ready for life to begin. His curiosity leads him into an affair with an older man - the first step on his journey to adulthood. Full of tenderness, humour and warmth, Ernesto is a beautifully rendered coming-of-age story. Written in 1953, but not published until 1975, this is the great Italian poet's most personal and confessional novel, presented here for the first time in unexpurgated form.

Umberto Saba (1909-1957) was an Italian novelist and poet. Raised by his Jewish mother in the ghetto of Trieste, he became best-known for his great confessional poems collected in Canzoniere, 'a sort of Odyssey of man in our times'.

A story about a boy's first experiences of sex... Saba has something without which there can never be realism or liberty in art (as in history itself), but only slavery and rhetoric - he had fundamental respect for life and for human beings' -- Elsa Morante Mark Thompson's elegant new translation presents a clean, rustic prose * TLS * [Saba's] use of direct, unadorned language lends the work a sharp sense of immediacy, while his keen understanding of protean sexuality makes this a significant - even pioneering - work of gay literature * BookWitty * A frank and enjoyable coming-of-age story * Historical Novel Society *