by Carlo Emilio Gadda

Engineer Carlo Emilio Gadda (1893-1973) is one of twentieth-century Italy’s most innovative and eccentric writers. He was born in Milan into a middle-class family with distant ties to the aristocracy. His mother was a schoolteacher; his father, an industrialist. In 1899 the family built an expensive house in Longone in the province of Como, near Milan. The house, together with other financial obligations, subjected young Gadda to deprivations that he never forgot. In 1915, after a difficult childhood and adolescence, Gadda joined the army. That same year Italy entered World War I, and Gadda fought at the front, where he was captured during the disastrous defeat in Caporetto. After being held captive in Germany, Gadda returned to Milan. On learning that his brother Enrico had died in a military plane crash, Gadda suffered psychologically. He managed to graduate in electrical engineering...