We have complete spoilers for the August 2019 Boxwalla Book Box! Last call to get this box – last day to subscribe is tomorrow 8/1!
Each box includes:
The first book in the August Book Box is Portuguese writer, Fernando Pessoa’s highly acclaimed The Book of Disquiet. This is a new complete edition, translated by Maragret Jull Costa from the latest Portuguese version edited by Pessoa scholar Dr. Jeronimo Pizarro. Published by New Directions in 2017 , this newest edition, unlike previous editions, presents Pessoa’s texts chronologically.
Pessoa wrote prose and poetry under a multitude of personae that he called heteronyms. The Book of Disquiet is often called one of the greatest works of the twentieth centuries and is attributed to two of his heteronyms : Vincente Guedes and Bernardo Soares.
Here’s an excerpt:
“Man should not be able to see his own face. Nothing is more terrible than that. Nature gave him the gift of being unable either to see his face or look into his own eyes. He could only see his own face in the waters of rivers and lakes. Even the posture he had to adopt to do so was symbolic. He had to bend down, lower himself, in order to commit the ignominy of seeing his own face. The creator of the mirror poisoned the human soul.”
The second book is Italian writer, Natalia Ginzburg’s Happiness as such, a new translation published this June. Set in Rome, Happiness as such is a partly epistolary novel that is funny, sad, honest, insightful & just beautiful.
Natalia Ginzburg lost her first husband to the fascists after secretly running an anti-fascist newspaper with him in Rome. Her husband was arrested & died in jail. A mother of 5, she wrote novels & memoirs, played a role in one of Paolo Pasolini’s films & was also elected to the Italian parliament in 1983. She was forgotten for some time but is thankfully enjoying a bit of a revival and is beloved by writers Italo Calvino, Zadie Smith and Alexander Chee.
Cost of the box : $29.95. Retail Value : $40.90
What do you think of this month’s Boxwalla Book Box spoilers?
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