Night's Lies
By (Author) Gesualdo Bufalino
Translated by Patrick Creagh
Vintage Publishing
The Harvill Press
5th April 2011
United Kingdom
General
Fiction
Paperback
160
Width 138mm, Height 216mm, Spine 11mm
181g
In a Mediterranean island fortress-prison under the Bourbon monarchy four political prisoners suspected of conspiracy spend their last night before execution, discussing their lives, old hopes and ambitions.
Gesualdo Bufalino was born at Comiso, Sicily, in 1920. He studied literature at Catania and Palermo, and was a teacher by profession, turning author only after his retirement in 1976. He started his first novel, The Plague-Sower, in 1950, but it was only in 1981, after taking the discarded manuscript out of the drawer and reworking it, that it was published; it won the Premio Campiello. This and other works, including Blind Argus ("a construct of time and memory, artful and full of delight" Scotsman) on which the translator, Patrick Creagh, has won the John Florio Prize. With this novel, Night's Lies, the author won Italy's top literary award, the Premio Strega.