TOSCANELLI’S RAY

Book ID/图书代码： 12580013B60754

English Summary/英文概要： The story begins in the dark hours before the dawn of the summer solstice. It is 1994, Florence, where a ceremony in the cathedral to commemorate Paolo Toscanelli, an astronomer in the fifteenth century, will take place. His solstice measurement, part of the Church’s effort to fix a universal date for Easter, has scarcely deviated, but the Renaissance jewel of a city explored by myriad artists and writers is no longer as easily plotted. Illegal immigrants circulate in the center; prostitutes around the periphery. Americans and Brits have lost ground as privileged ex-pats. There is upheaval among the Florentines, no clear line of meaning.

Chinese Summary/中文概要： 這個極具魅力的故事發生在1994年的佛羅倫斯，當夏至的第一道曙光觸碰到布魯內萊斯基•菲利波建造的佛羅倫斯大教堂的尖頂前，這個聰慧、引人入勝的故事將告訴讀者人與人之間的關係網有多麼微妙，而每一分鐘又有多少自由選擇的權利被吞沒。

當太陽光穿過佛羅倫斯這個偉大又苦悶的城市時，一位尼日利亞妓女Milli正在被員警盤問；美國沙治療師Susan突然決定承認在自己的別墅的花園裡埋有一具伊特魯裡亞的女屍；她的前夫路易吉剛解決了和他的大學助理之間的糾纏，這位助理剛剛生好孩子；隨著情節發展，這些同樣特殊神秘的人物正陷入新的關係和糾纏中。

過往的故事和發生在佛羅倫斯的事情交織在一起，作者從人物的角度塑造出抒情詩話。當Milli失蹤後，另一位妓女決定將Milli的孩子Farina送去修道院，Farina和嬤嬤在一起的經歷足以讓所有人感動。作者從協力廠商角度觀察著這些來自不同背景的人。關鍵是他們在同一道陽光下，陽光下有到Milli的兒子，年輕的他正置身于哈考特港的政治反叛運動中；還有Susan的媽媽，她想要嘗試明尼阿波利斯的貨運生活；有沙治療師的情人，他剛死於布拉格；還有一對老農民，他們不能再忍受腐敗冷漠的佛羅倫斯。這裡的每一個人物都掙扎著想要獲得生活的平衡……

太陽、天堂和地下都是小說的一部分。這本創新性作品在希望膨脹的時代，透視了失去的經歷和轉變改造的傷痛。人物的思想和事件別編織成了一個難忘的故事，這個故事展現了人與人之間的緊密聯繫，以20世紀的佛羅倫斯為例表現離開國家，流落國外的感受，身在異鄉思考本國的感受，反映了第三世界和世界大國的妓女生活和剝削。

“TOSCANELLI’S RAY”將這些人物在幾個小時內發生的事情編織成一個巨大的網路，這些人物總多多少少聯繫在一起。在意識和強度的巨浪中，任何事情都不會長久。現實的想像、令人震驚、有說服力、熱情極有代表力的人物成功地將讀者引入一個多元文化的新世界。

這不是亨利•詹姆斯的佛羅倫斯、不是伊迪斯•沃頓、威廉•安頓•豪厄爾斯的佛羅倫斯、卻仍是文學史上傳統的文學主題。(Celia)

Awards/获奖情况："Toscanelli’s Ray is a brave and wonderfully ambitious book, a meditation on memory, identity and history. It is both a love song to the city of Florence, its ancient beauty and tangled history, and a cleared-eyed examination of the cracks and fissures that the new millennium has thrust upon it. In the course of a single day, Wilde-Menozzi’s remarkable characters (including a long-dead Etruscan woman) circle, engage, damage and heal each other in ways that never cease to surprise. This is a novel of big ideas, one that raises provocative questions about immigration, difference and culture---even our notion of time itself, and simultaneously it is a novel full of the stuff of life---passion, guilt, betrayal, politics, and marriage. A stunning accomplishment, and Wilde-Menozzi’s generous heart and lucid intelligence illuminate each page." ---Kathleen Cambor, The Book of Mercy

"Wallis Wilde-Menozzi’s stunning novel digs deep to unearth the new Italian mosaic: the Americans and Florentines are still here, alongside the Etruscans, but so are the Nigerians, and the Eastern Europeans. Can Florence rise again to spark a new renaissance? Her intricately woven narratives, tough and elegant, illuminate the afterlife of the humanist dream as only the best fiction can." ---Askold Melnyczuk, The House of Flowers

"Toscanelli’s Ray is an epic tale set in Florence with its ancient glory, its new graffiti, its bourgeoise, expatriates and illegal immigrants. Through rich mosaic like fragments we glimpse the utter strangeness of our own live in the twenty-first century. Voices from the global south, lives lived at the edge, in penury, without papers force a new reckoning of what Europe might be. Wallis Wilde-Menozzi’s language is iridescent, her grasp of the complexity of human time so sure, her sense of intimacy unerring." ---Meena Alexander, Fault Lines

"Modern fiction often adopts Dante’s populous weaving of human destinies: Melville’s whaler deck, or Woolf’s dining table in Mrs Dalloway. Happily this novel renews the contract. Farina, the Nigerian child at its focus, is also the flour whose name crosses from Latin into Italian and English. Of course she comes to matter intensely, but do does the annual solar event in the Duomo which makes this writer’s global Florence into our Chichen Itza, Chaco Canyon, or Montsegur: a shrine to alignments amid spinning flow, at one moment and one angle visible. ’The solution, the song, the prayer was the child. Farina. The light that needed to be extended.’" ---John Peck, Contradance

About the Author/作者介绍： 瓦利斯•王爾德 - 梅諾齊出生在美國威斯康辛州，隨後住在義大利帕爾馬，至今已經30年。她專注于在外國生活時，從國外的角度觀察本國的文化和生活。她的回憶錄：《Mother Tongue: An American Life in Italy》由North Point Press出版，受到評論界的一致好評，《紐約客》上刊登了此書好評。她曾撰寫了大量傑出的獲獎詩歌和散文，刊登在《密西西比評論》、《西南評論》、《巴黎聖母院評論》、《Spoon River Poetry Review》、《Granta》、《凱尼恩評論》、《阿格尼評論》等等。瓦利斯文學指導委員會成員（the steering committee），在瑞士拉夫基尼莊園的作家協會中也非常活躍。 2011年他的獲獎詩集《L’oceano e dentro di noi》在義大利出版。2013年新書《The Other Side of the Tiber》也即將由Farrar, Straus & Giroux出版。

Wallis Wilde-Menozzi grew up in Wisconsin and resides in Parma, Italy where she has participated in Italian life for more than thirty years. Her memoir, Mother Tongue: An American Life in Italy was published by North Point Press to critical acclaim and favorably reviewed in The New Yorker. Her forthcoming book on Italy, The Other Side of the Tiber will be published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2013. She is the author of many books of distinguished, award winning poetry. A collection of her prize-winning essays was published last year in Italy, L’oceano e dentro di noi (Moretti & Vitali, 2011). Wallis Wilde-Menozzi’s poetry has been published in the Mississippi Review, Southwest Review, Notre Dame Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, Granta, Kenyon Review, Agni, et cetera. Wallis Wilde-Menozzi is on the steering committee and is active in the programs of the Chateau Lavigny, Writer’s Residence, at Lavigny, Switzerland.

Format:HARDCOVER

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