Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: Infinite Summer
WORK NOTES: trans by Alice Kilgarriff
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 11/9/1964
WEBSITE:
CITY:
STATE:
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY: Italian
http://www.triquarterly.org/reviews/review-story-my-people-edoardo-nesi * http://www.otherpress.com/authors/edoardo-nesi/ * http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0994560/
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born November 9, 1964.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer, filmmaker, and translator.
AVOCATIONS:Bruno Cavallini Prize, for L’età dell’oro; Strata Award, 2011, for Story of My People.
WRITINGS
Also writer and director of the film, Fughe da fermo, Fandango, 2001; and translator of David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest.
SIDELIGHTS
Edoardi Nesi is an Italian writer, filmmaker, and translator, though he has also owned and operated a large textile factory in Prato, Italy. Nesi recounts his experiences in the textile business in Story of My People (which was originally published as Storia della mia gente). While the volume begins as a memoir, it quickly becomes a more essayistic exploration of the impacts of globalization. Indeed, Nesi explains that he inherited the textile factory from his father, and the business had been in the family for eighty years. Nesi was forced to shutdown in 2004, and his book describes how the shutdown affected the community. The author also explains that Italy’s declining economy after China joined the World Trade Organization in the 1990s. This event created a major competitor country that offered cheaper labor and cheaper materials.
Story of My People
Story of My People was largely praised by critics, and the book won the Strata Award in 2011 (Italy’s most prestigious literary honor). As a New Yorker reviewer put it, the book is a “blend of memoir, manifesto, and diatribe,” as well as “an intimate account of a homespun world.” While a Publishers Weekly contributor felt that the story is not without flaws, they nevertheless concluded that “much of the book is sad, honest, and biting; overall it is an important work.” Meghan Dowell, writing in Library Journal, was also positive, and she advised that “this rich narrative should appeal to economists and social scientists researching globalization.” A columnist in Reference & Research Book News echoed this sentiment, asserting that the book is “worth reading for anyone who likes good writing and wants a deeper understanding of either contemporary Europe or global business.” The contributor also found that “the book is written with a literary richness of language and a deep love of culture.”
In the words of a Kirkus Reviews correspondent, “the author mocks economist promoters of globalization as ‘sorcerers and wizards and haruspices.” Thus, Story of My People is “a tour de force that spares no one.” Offering further applause in his Finance & Development assessment, Josh Felman remarked: “The story of Prato’s demise is lyrically written and deeply moving. This is somewhat unusual for a book about business. But Nesi is not a typical businessman. Although he inherited his firm from his parents (and grandparents), he always wanted to be a writer.” Felman then concluded that this “is a book that spends more time exploring the impact of failure on people than describing the textile business.”
Infinite Summer
Nesi again draws on his family’s business for inspiration, this time for his novel Infinite Summer (which was originally released as L’estate infinita). The story follows Ivo Barrocciai, Cesare Vezzosi, and Pasquale Citarella, as they set out to build and open a textile factory in Florence. The tale is set during the 1970s; Ivo has just inherited his father’s blanket factory, and he decides to modernize and expand the business. His partners, Cesare and Pasquale, are not natural businessmen. In fact, all three characters seem more interested in romantic conquest than financial success. While Cesare woos a new mistress, Ivo woos Cesare’s wife.
Reviews of Infinite Summer were largely mixed, and a Publishers Weekly critic warned that “few women in the novel are fleshed out into full characters.” A Kirkus Reviews contributor was even more negative, asserting: “Unfortunately, all these narrative threads fail to add up to anything.” The result is “a bubbling but empty-headed tribute to manufacturing, production, and the wonders of capitalism.” On the other hand, a writer on the A Bookish Way of Life website announced: “I enjoyed getting to know Ivo, Cesare, and Pasquale through their relationships with each other, but mainly through their relationships with their loved ones. It all made for quite a funny, captivating, and unputdownable read.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Finance & Development, June, 2013, Josh Felman, “Lament for a Textile Town.”
Kirkus Reviews, June 1, 2013, review of Story of My People; May 15, 2017, review of Infinite Summer.
Library Journal, June 15, 2013, Meghan Dowell, review of Story of My People.
New Yorker, July 29, 2013, review of Story of My People.
Publishers Weekly, February 18, 2013, review of Story of My People; May 8, 2017, review of Infinite Summer.
Reference & Research Book News, December, 2013, review of Story of My People.
ONLINE
A Bookish Way of Life, http://abookishwayoflife.blogspot.com/ (July 13, 2017), review of Infinite Summer.
Kirkus Reviews Online, https://www.kirkusreviews.com/ (December 24, 2017), review of Everything Is Broken Up and Dances: The Crushing of the Middle Class.
Novels
Infinite Summer (2017)
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Non fiction
Everything Is Broken Up and Dances (2018) (with Guido Maria Brera)
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Edoardo Nesi is an Italian writer, filmmaker, and translator. He began his career translating the work of such authors as Bruce Chatwin, Malcolm Lowry, Stephen King, and Quentin Tarantino. He has written six novels, one of which, L'età dell'oro, was a finalist for the 2005 Strega Prize and a winner of the Bruno Cavallini Prize. He wrote and directed the film Fughe da fermo (Fandango, 2001), based on his novel of the same name, and has translated David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest.
Nesi, Edoardo: INFINITE SUMMER
(May 15, 2017):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Nesi, Edoardo INFINITE SUMMER Other Press (Adult Fiction) $27.95 7, 11 ISBN: 978-1-59051-822-9
Three young men set out to establish a textile firm in Florence, Italy.It's the 1970s, and the Italian economy is booming. Ivo Barrocciai, whose father has long run a small but well-established textile company, dreams of setting out on his own: establishing his own factory, modernizing, wildly expanding. Failure doesn't seem possible. "Wasn't it a miracle that anyone could try his hand at opening a business?" another character wonders in Nesi's (Story of My People, 2014) new novel. Ivo decides to build a massive factory and, to do so, acquires two partners, of sorts: Cesare Vezzosi, a scatterbrained, philandering tennis prodigy; and Pasquale Citarella, a simple, hardworking painter who blushes easily and has never had a bank account. The novel traces their business journey, along with several underlying threads: as Cesare pursues a mistress, Ivo pursues Cesare's wife, and Cesare's son pursues a classmate. Pasquale, meanwhile, tries to keep the business on track. Unfortunately, all these narrative threads fail to add up to anything. Ivo and Cesare are selfish, unsympathetic characters, and Nesi is so condescending in his treatment of Pasquale that those pages are difficult to get through. Nor are the joys and wonders of capitalism, the underlying theme of the novel, entirely convincing. And though we're told, many times, that Ivo's new factory is beautiful, very beautiful, incredibly beautiful, we never get any more specific details. A bubbling but empty-headed tribute to manufacturing, production, and the wonders of capitalism.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Nesi, Edoardo: INFINITE SUMMER." Kirkus Reviews, 15 May 2017. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A491934258/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=9212cba6. Accessed 12 Jan. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A491934258
Infinite Summer
264.19 (May 8, 2017): p36.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Infinite Summer
Edoardo Nesi, trans, from the Italian by Alice
Kilgarriff. Other Press, $27.95 (300p)
ISBN 978-1-59051-822-9
Italian writer and politician Nesi introduces readers to the Italy of the 1970s, decades years after the economic downfall of WWII, when a rebounding country is bright and hopeful again. Drawing on his real-life experiences in the textile industry, Nesi charts the growth of this new Italy through the founding of a grand textile company. Ivo Barrocciai, the son of a blanket merchant, is one of the brave new youth who view the newly connected and recovering Europe as an opportunity to be seized. By closing down his father's humble blanket factory, Ivo plans to open the largest textile factory that their town has ever seen. The factory and its construction gathers a generation of men who came of age in the tumultuous era after the war and exhibit the traits it took to survive in such unsure times. The novel is mainly a love letter to Italy, but also a celebration of the traditional masculinity of that era. Few women in the novel are fleshed out into full characters; many serve only as testaments to the virility of the male leads and become, much like their cars and clothing, status objects for the men who can claim them. The end result is a testosterone-fueled tale of triumph in a changing world. (July)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Infinite Summer." Publishers Weekly, 8 May 2017, p. 36. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A491949057/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=875383cf. Accessed 12 Jan. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A491949057
Nesi, Edoardo. Story of My People
Meghan Dowell
138.11 (June 15, 2013): p100.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2013 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/
Nesi, Edoardo. Story of My People. Other. 2013. 176p. tr. from Italian by Antony Shugaar. ISBN 9781590515549. $19.95. BUS
In this 2011 Strata award--winning book, a retrospective blended with social criticism, Italian filmmaker and translator Nesi (I Lie for a Living) poetically describes the effects of globalization on Italy's declining economy. Responding to his family's factory going out of business in Prato, Tuscany, Nesi focuses on the ramifications of China joining the World Trade Organiztion (WTO) in the 1990s and how this resulted in cheaper labor and raw materials, forcing many of the factories in the Italian textile industry to fold. Nesi's account speaks to personal loss but also to the impacts on his community. VERDICT Industry changes aren't unique to Italy--this rich narrative should appeal to economists and social scientists researching globalization, specifically the consequences of China joining the WTO.--Meghan Dowell, New York
Dowell, Meghan
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Dowell, Meghan. "Nesi, Edoardo. Story of My People." Library Journal, 15 June 2013, p. 100. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A333065421/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=36f65050. Accessed 12 Jan. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A333065421
Story of My People
89.22 (July 29, 2013): p67.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2013 Conde Nast Publications, Inc.. All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Conde Nast Publications, Inc.
http://www.newyorker.com/
In 2004, Nesi, an Italian novelist and translator, was forced to sell the business that had been in his family for more than eighty years--a textile company in Prato, one of the historic hearts of Italy's garment industry. In this blend of memoir, manifesto, and diatribe, he gives an intimate account of a homespun world, "glistening and weightless like silk," destroyed by rapid globalization. As Italian designers turn to China for their fabrics, Prato's weavers drop their prices to untenable lows and begin to shutter their factories. In an ironic twist, the buildings that once housed these factories are taken over by illegal Chinese immigrants, who use them to set up sweatshops. In gleefully biting prose, Nesi excoriates Italy's politicians, its arrogant economists, and the "titanic foreign multinationals" who "sell their heartless, unimaginative rags and schmattes everywhere around the world," promising "Giorgio Armani at Walmart costs."
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Story of My People." The New Yorker, 29 July 2013, p. 67. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A338121667/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=473fa4af. Accessed 12 Jan. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A338121667
Nesi, Edoardo: STORY OF MY PEOPLE
(June 1, 2013):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2013 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Nesi, Edoardo STORY OF MY PEOPLE Other Press (Adult Nonfiction) $19.95 5, 7 ISBN: 978-1-59051-554-9
Novelist and translator Nesi's lament for the passing of the way of life that helped Italy recover from the legacy of fascism, now available in English. The book won the 2011 Strega Prize, the most prestigious literary award in Italy. Along with his brothers, the author was meant to be the third generation to lead his family's textile weaving company, founded in Prato, Italy, by his grandfather in 1920. Instead, he became the one who had to sell the company in 2004, an act that marked the conclusion of a way of life. Nesi tells the story of the rise and fall of his family's business as part of the small-business world that supplied beautifully made parts and materials for the producers of consumer and capital goods throughout Europe. The author demonstrates a rich literary verve and a novelist's passion, as literary and cinematographic references work their way into his unfolding lament. His descriptions of the materials and manufacture of the cloth--"yarn-dyed, with a KD finish, rendering its pile unalterable and capable of withstanding the assault of Germany's acid rains and morning frosts"--and designers like Sergio Carpini, "who felt he had the right to perform alchemy with fabrics," help carry the story. Nesi shows how box-store price cutting and government tax policy combined to prevent businesses from making profits and instead created "the latest and most peculiar of the Prato businessman: the non-profit entrepreneur." The author mocks economist promoters of globalization as "sorcerers and wizards and haruspices"; their predictions were wrong, and the empty mills and silent businesses of what had been part of Italy's once-thriving economy show the results. A tour de force that spares no one.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Nesi, Edoardo: STORY OF MY PEOPLE." Kirkus Reviews, 1 June 2013. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A331669686/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=a9f07d47. Accessed 12 Jan. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A331669686
Lament for a textile town
Josh Felman
50.2 (June 2013): p56.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2013 International Monetary Fund
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2009/06/index.htm
Edoardo Nesi
Story of My People
Random House, New York, 2013, 163 pp., $19.95 (cloth).
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
They say that history is written by the winners. It's a cynical saying, and it's also sometimes untrue. The preeminent history of Rome's victory over ancient Israel was written by Josephus, a general from the losing side. Some of the classic--but by no means uncontested--accounts of India's independence were written by British historians. And now we have another classic by someone on the wrong end of history: Story of My People, Edoardo Nesi's book about how Chinese competition devastated the Italian textile industry.
So perhaps the claim needs to be revised. Perhaps one should say that readers prefer histories where the authors can claim virtue for their side, even in defeat. Think of all those books about Athens in the Peloponnesian Wars. But even that argument does not apply in this case. Nesi never claims the moral high ground for Italy. To the contrary, he readily acknowledges that the country was lucky from the 1950s through the 1990s, when any artisan prepared to work hard could succeed. That golden era has ended. It is now the turn of other nations to have their moment in the sun.
Nesi is not bitter about this. Rather, he is sad. So he has written a book that falls into a third, rare, and beautiful category: an elegy on a lost way of life. A people (specifically, the people of the textile-producing city of Prato) whose creativity was prized the world over has found that its skills are no longer in demand. The free market that once gave them prosperity and purpose has now taken both away. Formerly tireless workers now spin out their empty days, feeling exhausted though they've done no work, feeling ashamed though they've done nothing wrong.
The story of Prato's demise is lyrically written and deeply moving. This is somewhat unusual for a book about business. But Nesi is not a typical businessman. Although he inherited his firm from his parents (and grandparents), he always wanted to be a writer. And since he had to sell his firm, he has been free to write, which he has done with extraordinary success. The result is a book that spends more time exploring the impact of failure on people than describing the textile business. There is hardly a number to be found.
That's not to say the book lacks an argument. Nesi lays out a clear diagnosis of Prato's predicament. The biggest problem was the dismantling of the international clothing regime, which allowed cheap Chinese textiles to flood into Europe. At the time, economists predicted that Italian firms would in return be able to sell their high priced textiles to China. But this promise proved a chimera, except for a few firms with famous names.
The second main factor was more subtle. The Italian government, aiming to stamp out tax evasion, levied a tax on firms' revenue. That meant that even as profits turned to losses, firms were still liable for taxes. Instead, they just decided to shut down.
Nesi feels strongly that something should be done to help preserve Prato. But he doesn't know what. Instead, he suggests that economists, having given poor policy advice, now have to come up with solutions.
Can they? The answer is unclear. Standard economics says that the benefits from reducing tariffs--lower prices and better products for consumers--exceed the costs. That creates gains from trade, which the winners can share with the losers, for example by training them for new jobs.
But this book argues that such schemes cannot compensate for the loss of a way of life. Instead, governments should limit the process of "creative destruction;' or at least slow it down to make it more manageable. This can indeed be done, but at a cost to the rest of society. Britain tried this approach in the 1970s, and found that the costs--the subsidies, the damage to innovation and growth--eventually swelled to the point that society could no longer accept them. There followed an adjustment under Margaret Thatcher that proved all the more painful for having been deferred for so long.
Still, it is impossible to read this book without feeling that something must be done. Some economists agree and have taken up the research challenge. The results of their investigations will come too late for Prato. But other places could benefit, even those--especially those--that are now enjoying their golden eras. For if this book makes one thing clear, it is that golden eras do not last forever.
Josh Felman
Assistant Director
IMF Research Department
Felman, Josh
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Felman, Josh. "Lament for a textile town." Finance & Development, June 2013, p. 56. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A335409503/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=d2a26ae9. Accessed 12 Jan. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A335409503
Story of My People
260.7 (Feb. 18, 2013): p51.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2013 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Story of My People Edoardo Nesi, trans, from the Italian by Antony Shugaar. Other Press, $19.95 (176p) ISBN 978-1-59051-554-9
Concise yet chaotic, Italian filmmaker and translator Nesi's slim volume, winner of the Strega Prize, describes his experience selling his family textile business in 2004 and the effect of globalization on his beloved textile-driven city of Prato. The book takes meandering turns while bearing witness to a vanishing world. Nesi inherited his family's business and ran it for years, at one point operating a downsized version that only broke even. Though his love for his city and former occupation is clear and moving, the book lags during its many dips into Nesi's personal musings that seem to have little to do with the book's subject. An otherwise gorgeous chapter on visiting his old empty weaving mill, for example, has a three-page detour into what Nesi loves about music. However, the book strengthens by end, making for a searing indictment ofglobalization's failures, and the inability of politicians and pundits to consider its impact on real lives. The unrelated ruminations make for confounding reading at times, but much of the book is sad, honest, and biting; overall it is an important work. Agent: Elisabetta Sgarbi, RCS Libri. (May)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Story of My People." Publishers Weekly, 18 Feb. 2013, p. 51. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A320068802/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=d3dbbd5a. Accessed 12 Jan. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A320068802
Story of my people
28.6 (Dec. 2013):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2013 Ringgold, Inc.
http://www.ringgold.com/
9781590515549
Story of my people.
Nesi, Edoardo. Trans. by Antony Shugaar.
Other Press LLC
2012
163 pages
$19.95
Hardcover
HD9905
Edoardo Nesi is Italy's upper crust; heir to a firm in the fine textile industry, he reports a life of luxury with an utter lack of self-consciousness. He admires Machiavelli, and writes with more romantic affection for his factory than for the men who worked there. All this makes him an unlikely candidate for an impassioned manifesto against unbridled global capitalism. But this is what the book is. It is valuable precisely because of its source. To most U.S. readers it will be an unusual book; the figure of a business magnate who is also a famous novelist and translator is not such a unicorn in Italy. The book is written with a literary richness of language and a deep love of culture, and much of it is structured as memoir. Readers come to understand Nesi is as precisely a product of his region as a good wine--and so is the fine cloth his factory made, the system that made it available as warm and durable coats, and the thousands of people that industry supported. He paints a picture of a region built on skilled craft, local industry, trade, and not a little noblesse oblige. Since the passage of globalization trade laws, almost all of it is gone. The ghost of F. Scott Fitzgerald hovers over the book. The author sold out early; his own fortune is safe. But his men are unemployed, his CEO friends are becoming the Third World, his city grows desperate, and his factory is bought by fly-by-night Chinese entrepreneurs, who use it as a squatter camp for imported slave labor until they are shut down by police for violating basic labor and safety laws. Nesi creates an unfamiliar mix of memoir and the politics of business. But in one breathtaking scene he makes clear the alternative to thinking personally about trade policy is the racial hate that fueled two world wars. The message is equally applicable in the U.S. In the end, uncomfortably, self-consciously, Nesi takes hold of the banner of protest. The book won Italy's Strega Prize for literature. It is ably but quietly translated by Anthony Shugaar. Worth reading for anyone who likes good writing and wants a deeper understanding of either contemporary Europe or global business.
([c] Book News, Inc., Portland, OR)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Story of my people." Reference & Research Book News, Dec. 2013. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A351464785/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=d6a569eb. Accessed 12 Jan. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A351464785
Thursday, July 13, 2017
Inifinite Summer: A Novel by Edoardo Nesi
OUT THIS WEEK (JULY 11th):
(Thank you to Other Press for providing me with a copy of this book!)
about book:
Set in Tuscany in the Seventies, three men share a dream of building a textile factory from scratch, in a time and place when everything still seemed possible
Ivo Barrocciai, the son of a textile artisan and full of enthusiasm, embarks on a slightly over-ambitious undertaking: to build a large factory that will be “the envy of the Milanese.” He involves Cesare Vezzosi, a small building contractor, and Pasquale Citarella, a site foreman from Southern Italy, in the project. Their relationships with their wives, their secret passions, their ambitions and the compromises they have to make form a comical, moving fresco, a family saga, a love story—not only about people, but also about a flourishing nation rich with opportunity and promise.
my thoughts:
Italy during the 70s - what more could I want from a book, right? How about a story that is chock full of unforgettable characters from all walks of life who are filled with hopes and dreams, but flawed in every way imaginable. Oh, and writing that is rich with creativity - the beauty of the prose drips from the pages and it sweeps you away to Tuscany with its glorious vividness. Well, I got all of that and more from Edoardo Nesi's latest work, Infinite Summer.
Talk about a must-read book for the summer!! I absolutely LOVED Infinite Summer. I soaked up the descriptions of Italian life and culture with pleasure. The smells, the sights, and the sounds came to life. I could imagine myself walking around a piazza, eating gelato, and people-watching. The sky is blue and cloudless, the air filled with life, and the flea market bustling with shoppers eyeing leather-bound journals and dazzling necklaces. Its like I'm right there and I can't help but smile. To be in Italy is to be in bliss.
The story focuses on capitalism and the textile trade industry via three men: Ivo, Cesare, and Pasquale. Ivo wants to build the largest textile manufacturing company in all of Tuscany. He hires Cesare as the contractor and Pasquale as the foreman. The two men are thrown into new terrain upon learning about Ivo's outlandish expectations for the building and his company. And yet, through their hard work and determination the trio somehow manage to make things happen. Its fascinating and eye-opening to learn about the "behind the scenes" machinations of creating and running a textile manufacturing company. Of course, what makes it all so interesting are the people and their personal lives. Somehow, the personal always manages to intersect with the professional at some point. I enjoyed getting to know Ivo, Cesare, and Pasquale through their relationships with each other, but mainly through their relationships with their loved ones. It all made for quite a funny, captivating, and unputdownable read. I absolutely LOVED Infinite Summer!!
I would happily recommend Infinite Summer by Edoardo Nesi to fans of his work and anyone looking for their next great summer read - you are going to LOVE this book!!
Thank you to Other Press for providing me with a copy of this book!
Posted by Nadia A at 10:16 AM
Labels: Edoardo Nesi, fiction, Infinite Summer, Italian Literature, Italy, Literature, novel, Other Press, translated from the Italian by Alice Kilgarriff
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EVERYTHING IS BROKEN UP AND DANCES by Edoardo Nesi
EVERYTHING IS BROKEN UP AND DANCES
The Crushing of the Middle Class
by Edoardo Nesi & Guido Maria Brera ; translated by Antony Shugaar
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KIRKUS REVIEW
Two Italians from different backgrounds offer call-and-response pieces on the post-millennial economic collapse.
The title, taken from Jim Morrison’s “Ghost Song,” and the opening evocation of U2’s Bono suggest from the start that this will not be a dry economic analysis restricted to the native Italy of the co-authors. Instead, the narrative is often impassionedly lyrical, both literary and musical in quality, as it proceeds from the unbridled optimism of the late 1990s to the abject hopelessness that the authors blame on globalization in general and China’s entry into the World Trade Organization in particular. Nesi is a prizewinning novelist (Story of My People, 2013, etc.) and politician who had faced unemployment after being forced to sell the textile company that his grandfather started in the 1930s. Brera is the founder of an Italian investment management company that saw benefits from the economic downturn that plagued Southern Europe. Interestingly, alternating chapters find both authors following the same emotional arc, from a faith in “a future that had never before looked so promising,” amid the 1990s and its “grand, continuous, thrilling process of acceleration,” through “the disasters of globalization” and the “desperate, sentimental, Luddite war against the world and against the future.” What happened? Among other factors, outsourcing, cost-cutting, national debt, and, most egregiously, competition from demagogues that have had no respect for worker rights, environmental controls, or trademark protections under which the industrial West operated. Globalization promised to lift more than 1 billion people out of poverty, and it did, agree the authors—“one billion Chinese.” The analysis often soars as a work of sociocultural criticism, though it doesn’t offer much hope as economic analysis. Instead, it shows how hopes so high could be brought so low.
The result is an analysis that sings, though its melody turns increasingly sour.
Pub Date: March 27th, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-59051-931-8
Page count: 208pp
Publisher: Other Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 24th, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15th, 2018