The Art of Joy

The Art of Joy (L'arte della gioia) is an Italian novel by Goliarda Sapienza. Sapienza completed the work in 1976 but it remained unpublished until after her death when Sapienza's spouse self-published the novel in 1998. In 2013 Anne Milano Appel translated the novel into English and it was published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.[1]

Plot

The novel follows a woman, Modesta, who is born on January 1, 1900 and grows up in rural Sicily and whose fortunes rise in the twentieth century.

Reception

The novel received mixed reviews. Emily Cooke writing for The New Yorker called the novel "too long, often awkward, sometimes tedious" and yet praised the "book’s crudeness [as] exactly its strength".[1] Kirkus Reviews called the novel "long and sometimes slow moving" while also noting that "the book has considerable merit".[2] The Daily Beast criticized it as a book"that just isn’t ready to see the light of day."[3]

References
  1. Cooke, Emily. "Disobedience is a Virtue: On Goliarda Sapienza's "The Art of Joy"".
  2. "THE ART OF JOY by Goliarda Sapienza ; translated by Anne Milano Appel". Retrieved 22 March 2019.
  3. Elkin, Lauren. "Is This a Book Worth Saving? Considering 'The Art of Joy'". Retrieved 22 March 2019.


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