Woman of Rome: A Life of Elsa Morante

By Lily Tuck

Book Overview

Elsa Morante was born in 1912 to an unconventional family of modest means. She grew up with an independent spirit, a formidable will, and a commitment to writing--she wrote her first poem when she was just two years old. During World War II, Morante and her husband, the celebrated writer Alberto Moravia, were forced to flee occupied Rome--Moravia was half-Jewish (as was she) and wanted by the Fascists--and hide out in a remote mountain hut. After the war, Morante published a series of prize-winning novels, including Arturo's Island and History, a seminal account of the war, which established her as one of the leading Italian writers of her day.

Lily Tuck's elegant and unusual biography also evokes the heady time during the postwar years when Rome was the film capital of the world and Morante's counted among her circle of friends the filmmakers Pier Paolo Pasolini, Luchino Visconti, and the young Bernardo Bertolucci. A charismatic and beautiful woman, Morante had a series of love affairs--most unhappy--as well as friendships with such famous literary luminaries as Carlo Levi, Italo Calvino, and Natalia Ginzburg. As a couple, Morante and Moravia--the Beauvoir-Sartre of Italy--captivated the nation with their intense and mutual admiration, their arguments, and their passion.

Wonderfully researched with the cooperation of the Morante Estate, filled with personal interviews, and written in graceful and succinct prose, Woman of Rome introduces the American reader to a woman of fierce intelligence, powerful imagination, and original talent.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0061472565
• ISBN13: 9780061472565
• Release Date: July 2008
• Publisher: Harper
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 1.02 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.5" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

BRILLIANT!!!!

I'd never heard of Elsa Morante before a good friend recommended WOMAN OF ROME. Not only couldn't I put it down, I've ordered all of Morante's and all of Tuck's books on line. To think I'd never heard of Morante, a woman who lived life purely on her own terms. And what a life! Lily Tuck won the National Book Award and I can see why. Her prose is pitch-perfect, smart, often funny and invariably moving. I loved this book. Elsa Morante is blessed to have Lily Tuck as a biographer. I'd give ELSA MORANTE: WOMAN OF ROME 100 stars if I could.

Elsa Morante a tantalizing figure

Lily Tuck captures the fundamentally elusive nature of Elsa Morante. Morante is a difficult subject, not easy to love or understand, but tantalizing all the same, and an important and (in America) overlooked writer. Tuck, with her deft, non-judgmental style, her cosmopolitan detachment, is the perfect biographer. She can love Morante without needing to completely explain or understand her. A terrific job!

Woman of the World

From start to finish, Lily Tuck brings to this nuanced and dazzling biography of a difficult woman the intuition, the appreciation, the empathy, and the skill of a writer no less gifted than her subject. Both personal and acute, this book resembles no literary biography that has come my way. Like its subject, it will always be a true original.

an interesting biography

I am an English professor and did not really know the work of this writer. The book spurred my interest and now I will find some of Morante's novels and read them. A provocative study of her life and relationships and nicely written.