mercoledì 22 giugno 2011

Discovering Niccolo' Ammaniti

A while ago, when I was looking for Italian books to read and films to watch, a friend recommended Niccolo' Ammaniti's Ti prendo e ti porto via. The next time I was in Italy, I bought it, I read it and I loved it. When I finished it, desperate to experience again that feeling of reading such a great book that you can't wait for a boring train journey so that you can find out what happens next, I bought Io non ho paura.

I love reading in Italian. I would much rather read in Italian than French, even although in theory my French is far better than my Italian. However, because I learned Italian largely by speaking rather than studying literature, it's important to me to find books that are at the right level, and Ammaniti's definitely fit into that category.

At the same time, I remain an English literature graduate at heart and if the quality of the writing is too trashy, it bothers me, even if it is in a foreign language. Ammaniti does use language well (as far as I can tell) but really it's the characters and the plots that I appreciate in his stories. In Ti prendo e ti porto via, he describes personalities which are greatly flawed but, with the insights that he gives into human nature, manages to maintain the reader's sympathy for the characters.

Another thing I appreciated about the books was the insight into Italian culture that they gave to me. In the UK, we tend to associate poverty and its terrible consequences with living in the inner cities, but Ammaniti shows how the Italy that many people consider to be a rural idyll is home to great deprivation and all its associated problems.

For anyone who wants a thought provoking but manageable read in Italian, I would definitely recommend the two books , and, having finished the second one, I'm off to look for his other works on Amazon!