The Round Dance A Novel

Carmine Abate

FOREWORD BY FRANCESCO ALTIMARI

TRANSLATED BY MICHELANGELO LA LUNA

“Carmine Abate’s The Round Dance is a mesmerizing, intergenerational modern epic of resistance and change, staying and leaving, recovery and dispersal. It kidnaps our senses and our mind’s eye in the swirl of its poetic vitality and light-heartedness. La Luna’s outstanding, sensitive translation is a true gift to English readers of all ages.”

—Giovanna Micelli Jeffries, author of Bitter Trades: A Memoir

“Carmine Abate invites readers to experience the Italo-Albanian world and to deepen their appreciation for the uniqueness of the Arbëreshë community. Step back in time through the lively characters of this brilliantly written novel that explores themes of collective memory, myth and reality, migration, and cultural transmission.”

—Mithat Gashi, Albanian American activist

“Carmine Abate’s novelistic debut is a groundbreaking postmodern ‘metaphor of the world.’ This Italo-Albanian ‘round dance,’ brilliantly translated by Michelangelo La Luna, offers a blueprint for how to deal with cultural belonging in a globalized world while holding aesthetic as well as moral, religious, and social value.”

—Dagmar Reichardt, coeditor of Icone della transculturalità

The village of Hora is a magical place that blurs the boundaries between a mythical past and the present. It is here that Constantino Avati grows alongside his impetuous and melancholic father, Francesco; his mother, Elena, who hides a secret torment; his two sisters, Orlandina and Lucrezia; and his grandfather Lissandro, the last custodian of an era and a world that are disappearing. As Constantino feels the pangs of first love with the intriguing Roman Isabella, he also discovers the romantic allure of his own village and its rich cultural heritage. In his first novel, acclaimed author Carmine Abate transforms his Italo-Albanian (Arbëresh) hometown of Carfizzi, Calabria, into a magical realist wonderland that rivals Gabriel García Márquez’s Macondo. Inspired by the oral traditions of the old Albanian bards and incorporating the poetic local dialect, The Round Dance is a unique piece of multicultural literature that was named by the publishing house Mondadori as one of the one hundred greatest Italian novels of the twentieth century.

CARMINE ABATE is a prolific Italian author whose many books include the novels Between Two Seas and The Homecoming Party and the short story collection The Wedding Banquet and Other Flavors. His debut novel, The Round Dance (Il ballo tondo), won the ARGE ALP Readers’ International Prize.

MICHELANGELO LA LUNA is a professor of Italian language and literature at the University of Rhode Island. He is the author of several books and articles on Italian and Italian-Albanian writers and poets, such as Carmine Abate, Luigi Capuana, Dante Alighieri, Girolamo De Rada, Dacia Maraini, and Pier Paolo Pasolini. Other Voices of Italy

254 pp 5 x 8

978-1-9788-3743-0 paper $24.95T

978-1-9788-3744-7 cloth $59.95SU

October 2023

Literature

“The Arbëreshë community has made southern Italy its home for six centuries by renewing its identity as a distinct ethnic, linguistic, and religious minority. Masterfully written, The Round Dance opens their world for English-speaking audiences and is a welcome addition to the canon of migrant literature.”

—Ines Murzaku, coeditor of Greek Monasticism in Southern Italy

“Through a lovely translation of Carmine Abate’s poetic language, The Round Dance unveils to English readers the marvelous, centuries-long odyssey of the Albanian people in southern Italy and beyond, underscoring what some have called ‘the powers of diaspora.’”

—Tullio Pagano, author of The Making and Unmaking of Mediterranean Landscape in Italian Literature: The Case of Liguria

268 pp 0 figures 5 x 8

978-1-9788-3710-2 paper $24.95T

978-1-9788-3711-9 cloth $59.95SU

October 2023

Literature

“When Things Happen is a vivid story suffused by the indifferent air of Naples. Gregory Pell’s translation captures the urgency of Cannavacciuolo’s prose as he reminds us of how the unexpected encounter with innocence can draw us back to the refuse of our own childhoods.”

—Rebecca R. Falkoff, author of Possessed: A Cultural History of Hoarding

“There is no refuge in Cannavacciuolo’s captivating novel, and, yet, it is so difficult to put down. You want to know where it’s going, you need to get there, and you’ll do so in a story that wrenches your heart and shows you a city you might not have found in any other book before.”

—Barbara Alfano, author of The Mirage of America in Contemporary Italian Literature and Film