by Howard Curtis

Gianfranco Calligarich’s Last Summer in the City was first published in Italy in 1973, when its author, like the book’s protagonist, was a young journalist in Rome: this was his first novel. Despite initial success and critical acclaim, it was then forgotten for several decades. It is only in the last ten or so years that the book has been rediscovered, reissued in Italy, and translated into a dozen languages. (The author, having given up novel writing after this one attempt and embarked on a distinguished career in television and theatre, did not publish his second novel until 39 years after the first – surely something of a record.)    

The protagonist, as I have indicated, is a young journalist named Leo. But it could be said that the real protagonist of the book is the city of Rome: Rome at the beginning of the 1970s, at what we might think of as the tail end of the dolce vita. Leo, like many of the characters, has come to Rome from somewhere else, in his case Milan, attracted to the city at a time when it briefly seemed like the centre of the world, a magnet to anyone with ambitions. Now, time has passed, some of those dreams have faded, and ambition has given way to drift. During one last long Roman summer, Leo makes a desperate attempt to get his life back on track, tries out a new job, co-writes a screenplay, and, most importantly, falls headlong in love with the enigmatic and not quite stable Arianna.

Written in vivid, evocative prose, its mood shifting constantly from the satirical to the elegiac and back again, this novel is an unforgettable portrait of an era, a generation, and above all, a city. As the narrator says: “Rome by her very nature has a particular intoxication that wipes out memory. She’s not so much a city as a wild beast hidden in some secret part of you. There can be no half measures with her, either she’s the love of your life or you have to leave her, because that’s what the tender beast demands, to be loved. […] If she’s loved, she’ll give herself to you whichever way you want her, all you need to do is go with the flow and you will be within reach of the happiness you deserve.”

Allow yourself to be caught up in the flow of this exceptional novel, and you too will feel the intoxication of this dazzling, overwhelming city.   

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Last Summer in the City

• by Gianfranco Calligarich
• Translated from the Italian by Howard Curtis
• Original title: L’ultima estate in città  (1973)
• 179 pages
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (USA); Picador (UK)
• ISBN: 978-1-250-84925-0 (USA); 978-1529042290 (UK)
• Published 2021
• Treat your bookshelf to a taste of Italy! Order the book here (US) or here (UK).

Reviews:

• Los Angeles Review of Books
• European Literature Network
• The Massachusetts Review

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