The Devil in the Hills (Peter Owen Modern Classics) [Paperback]

Cesare Pavese (Author), D. D. Paige (Translator)

Book Description

Series: Peter Owen Modern Classic | Publication Date: March 25, 2002

This novel is considered to be Cesare Pavese's most personal. It's setting is the landscape of his own boyhood: the hills, vineyards, and villages of Piedmont. Three young men spend away their sun-drenched summer talking, drinking, enjoying life. One senses it is their last such summer. In view of its transience, the prolonged leisure of their new wealthy acquaintance Poli fascinates them. For a while they linger in his world, in his decaying villa, half-appalled by his cocaine addiction, his blasphemy, his corrupt circle of friends, but nonetheless mesmerized, until autumn creeps upon the hillside, and the seasonal moment of leave taking arrives. Pavese's nine short novels make up the most dense, dramatic, and homogenous narrative cycle of modern Italy.. They are works of extraordinary depth where one never stops finding new levels, new meanings.""--Italo Calvino.

Editorial Reviews

Language Notes

Text: English, Italian (translation) --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

About the Author

Cesare Pavese was the author of The Political Prisoner.

Product Details

• Paperback: 190 pages
• Publisher: Peter Owen Ltd (March 25, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0720611180
• ISBN-13: 978-0720611182
• Product Dimensions: 7.4 x 4.9 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,556,365 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars The joys and anxieties of being twenty, September 22, 2010

By 

R. M. Peterson (Santa Fe, NM) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Devil in the Hills (Peter Owen Modern Classics) (Paperback)

Cesare Pavese is regarded by many to be one of the best Italian writers of the mid-20th Century. All of his work was produced in the 1940s; he committed suicide in 1950.

THE DEVIL IN THE HILLS is set in Turin and in the wild countryside of the Piedmont, from where Pavese hailed. It features an ensemble of young people casting about for the meaning and purpose of life. It begins with three males, about 20, transitioning between adolescence and manhood. They carouse, tease one another, assume airs of worldliness, sunbathe in the nude, and philosophize (often, fatuously). They are both cocksure of themselves and unsure of themselves. Their growing up becomes more complicated when they go for an extended stay in the hills at the estate of Poli, a rich young man, slightly older than they. Poli is a cocaine addict, he is spiritually debauched, and he maintains a curious and open marriage with Gabriella.

In the end, nothing much happens in the novel. It might be thought of as an existential novel, somewhat representative of its time. It is freighted with the tensions and mysteries, the joys and anxieties of maturation. I believe it would have appealed to me more when I too was in my early twenties. Now, it strikes me as rather jejune.

The writing tends to be plain and matter-of-fact. At times it becomes choppy, though this might be due to the translation. Another translation, by R.W. Flint, is contained in "The Selected Works of Cesare Pavese", published by New York Review Books Classics. I don't regret reading THE DEVIL IN THE HILLS, but doing so has not sparked a burning desire to read more of Pavese.

5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Italian F. Scott Fitzgerald, November 6, 1999

By 

"[e-mail]" - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Devil in the Hills (Hardcover)

Marvelous, sensuous novel which brings to mind nothing so much as an Italian F. Scott Fitzgerald at the top of his form. Achingly romantic, lushly cinematic and beautiful. One of my favorite writers of this century.