Book in Italian.

Paperback, size 16.5 x 24cm. I-XXIX, 214 pp. Edizioni Valdonega 2003.

The author of this book, Giancarlo Vigorelli - writer and art critic - was born in Milan in 1913. He was also a newspaper editor and general secretary of the European Writers’ Congress, as well as vice president of the Istituto Luce. He founded the magazine L’Europa Letteraria. He died in Marina di Pietrasanta on 16th September 2005 at the age of 92.
In Sergio Pautasso’s foreword we can read the following: “This book, with its provocative title The Novel’s Sin, is not an anthology of the various articles Giancarlo Vigorelli wrote over the course of his career as a critic dedicated to both theoretical analysis of the novel, taken beyond its “genre”, because its “genre” has a value – for example suggesting the term “profession” – and to helping Italians, who read so many works of fiction by both Italian and foreign writers, to understand the power of representation wielded by the novel. (…) Always loyal to Manzoni’s statement that “literature will be treated properly when it comes to be regarded as a branch of moral science,” Vigorelli always tried to give his writer self its own particular moral – but not moralising – character, and to participate in events not through descriptions but through criticism of them. (…) However, Vigorelli’s main contribution was to introduce the Western world to the literary situation in Eastern countries, establishing a cultural dialogue that in those times was a courageous political choice.
Vigorelli’s book begins thusly: “I would like it if we Italians would, for a moment, see the novel as an error, a fall from grace; a sin. And if error is an earthy, pagan word, I would like to invite you to take the others – fall and sin – in their Christian meanings.
But I would not like to press – at least not immediately – towards such capital orders and questions. I will let the answers gradually emerge throughout the book, nice and slowly.”