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An epic tale of love, lies, and a family’s disgrace in the unforgiving south of Italy.
After receiving stunning critical acclaim and France’s most prestigious literary award, the Goncourt Prize, Laurent Gaudé’s The House of Scorta (published in France as Le Soleil des Scorta) has sold more than 400,000 copies. Spanning five generations in a small village in southern Italy, Gaudé’s novel is laced with infamous crimes, forsaken loves, and lifelong secrets.
The saga of the Scortas opens in 1870 with Rocco Scorta Mascalzone, the bastard product of a rape and a notorious scoundrel whose legacy the family is forced to confront. While their lineage seems doomed to struggle, the Scortas are blessed with an imposing pride and a relentless faith in their own power. Besides a little tobacco shop they manage to open with their years of savings, their wealth all but lies in their memories and their collective belief in the pursuit of happiness.
Gaudé’s omniscient, linear narrative is interwoven with the recollections of the old Carmela as she delivers her last confession to the family priest, exposing the family’s deep-buried secret.
This slender chronicle of a southern Italian family in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries won France’s Goncourt Prize. The family patriarch is a bandit who rapes a village woman and is stoned to death; his (rather willing) victim dies soon after childbirth. Their son becomes an infamous and wealthy outlaw, whose three children, left penniless when he bequeaths all his money to the Church, strive to reëstablish their name and their fortune. The already operatic story line is embellished with grandiose flourishes—burning desire that leads to an actual fire, guilt that gnaws until its sufferer starves to death—but, happily, it is also underpinned by a deeper concern with sacrifice and redemption.
| Price | Condition | Delivery | Seller | Action |
| $99.99 | Digital |
| WonderClub |
Bryan L Mon
reviewed House of Scorta on October 19, 2013 House of Scorta
Blood is thicker than water, and in southern Italy in the late 1900's, family blood in the dirt-poor coastal town of Montepuccio was so thick you could walk on it. Carmela, with her three brothers, runs the family business of cigarette smuggling. Their mother, whom they called "the Mute," as did everyone else, died when they were very young. Carmela, when very old, tells most of the story in retrospect to the village priest so he can relate it to her newly-born granddaughter. "I was a sister my whole life long...when people hear of my death no one will say `Manuzio's widow died; they'll say the Scortas' sister died.' "The only happiness I've ever known was when I was surrounded by my brothers." The novel, translated from the French, was a winner of France's Goncourt Prize. The language, the irony, and the tricks of language in this book are beautiful. "Smoke, Don Salvatore, it will do us both good." "You can hardly hear what I'm saying. Don't let it bother you. I prefer it this way." "When I asked for a word with you... you gave a start ... as if a dog had started speaking." Read this book.
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