Dr Raffaello Palumbo Mosca, Research Fellow in the Department of Italian, has recently published a new book, entitled L’invenzione del vero: Romanzi ibridi e discorso etico nell’Italia contemporanea [The Invention of Truth: Hybrid Novels and Ethical Discourse in Contemporary Italy] (Gaffi Editore, 2014).
The publisher’s description is in Italian; in English it reads as follows:
‘This book contributes to a long-running literary debate that has dominated the cultural pages of Italian press for some years: it is true that the novel ‘died’? In celebrating the end of the genre have we not lost our understanding of the object in question? What is – what has become today – this thing (the novel) that could be dying? And, more importantly, this novel that dies – if it dies – is something we still need?
From Antonio Franchini’s L’Abusivo to Jonathan Littell’s The Kindly Ones, passing by Roberto Saviano’s non-fictional novels, and the moral meditations of Eraldo Affinati, L’invenzione del vero is a journey in contemporary Italian, French, and American fiction.
With a careful textual analysis and rigorous research of the sources, Raffaello Palumbo Mosca finds and reveals the reasons that still make the novel a key tool for understanding both the world and the human being.’
For more details on the book, please see the publisher’s page here:
www.gaffi.it/cgi-bin/front_end/libri?id=2542&autori=1