Review
Memory is the subject ofÂ…BompianiÂ’s "The Great Bear," a kaleidoscopic yet always lucid chronicle of childhood, love and emancipation. --Publishers Weekly, October 27, 2000
Ginevra Bompiani s L'Orso Maggiore, a long story or a short novel, depending on what you want to call it, was published in 94 by Anabasi in Milan. Now it also speaks English, thanks to the attentive mediation of Brian Kern and Sergio Parussa. Italica Press of New York, always attentive to our concerns and on the mark in its editorial choices, is the publisher.... There's a sort of clear similarity between Bompiani and Calvino. In both, in fact, there's a magical and intricate mixing of philosophy and fantasy that expresses the obvious details of daily life and a mythical realism, where the smallest day-to-day things, apparently insignificant in themselves, come instead to play a determining role in the destiny and fortunes of these creatures. --America Oggi, June 9, 2002
Ginevra Bompiani s L'Orso Maggiore, a long story or a short novel, depending on what you want to call it, was published in 94 by Anabasi in Milan. Now it also speaks English, thanks to the attentive mediation of Brian Kern and Sergio Parussa. Italica Press of New York, always attentive to our concerns and on the mark in its editorial choices, is the publisher.... There's a sort of clear similarity between Bompiani and Calvino. In both, in fact, there's a magical and intricate mixing of philosophy and fantasy that expresses the obvious details of daily life and a mythical realism, where the smallest day-to-day things, apparently insignificant in themselves, come instead to play a determining role in the destiny and fortunes of these creatures. --America Oggi, June 9, 2002
Product Description
Ginevra Bompiani's fiction could be compared to certain figurations of Sleep. The landscape created by her prose recalls paintings in which peaceful figures sleep in a quiet wood, in a solitary house — any place where the senses can dim and reason's guard is dropped. These are places where nothing seems to happen but which open onto a dream's thousand possibilities. It is precisely into that borderland — where reason dozes off and makes room for myths, fables, and dreams — that Ginevra Bompiani’s prose ventures.
Bompiani has been compared to Calvino. Both share a style that combines philosophical intent with modes of fantasy, a “Mythical Realism” that uses fairy-tale and mythical tropes to express the discrepancies in everyday reality. Here the old gods of the sky can teach us how much our world is haunted by a total absence of spirit.
GINEVRA BOMPIANI was born in Milan and teaches Comparative Literature at the University of Siena.
She is the author of several works of fiction: Bartelemi all'ombra (Milan: Mondadori, 1967), Le specie del sonno (Milan: Ricci, 1975; Macerata: Quodlibet, 1998), Mondanità (Milan: La Tartaruga, 1980), L'incantato (Milan: Garzanti, 1987), Vecchio cielo, nuova terra (Milan: Garzanti, 1988), and L'orso maggiore (Milan: Anabasi, 1994), most of which have been translated into French: Les règnes du sommeil (Paris: Verdier, 1986), L'Etourdi (Paris: Gallimard, 1989), Ciel ancien, terre nouvelle (Paris: Gallimard, 1990), and Le Grand Ours (Paris: Stock, 1995). Vecchio cielo, nuova terra has also appeared in a Spanish translation in 1994 (Viejo cielo, nueva tierra. Barcelona: Lumen, 1994).
Ginevra Bompiani is also the author of two children's books, Via terra (Turin: Einaudi, 1994) and L'amorosa avventura di una pelliccia e di un'armatura (Palermo: Sellerio, 2000). She is well known for her literary criticism as well. Among her essays are Lo spazio narrante (Milan: La Tartaruga, 1978), L'attesa (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1988), and Tempora (Milan: Anabasi, 1993).
Bompiani has been compared to Calvino. Both share a style that combines philosophical intent with modes of fantasy, a “Mythical Realism” that uses fairy-tale and mythical tropes to express the discrepancies in everyday reality. Here the old gods of the sky can teach us how much our world is haunted by a total absence of spirit.
GINEVRA BOMPIANI was born in Milan and teaches Comparative Literature at the University of Siena.
She is the author of several works of fiction: Bartelemi all'ombra (Milan: Mondadori, 1967), Le specie del sonno (Milan: Ricci, 1975; Macerata: Quodlibet, 1998), Mondanità (Milan: La Tartaruga, 1980), L'incantato (Milan: Garzanti, 1987), Vecchio cielo, nuova terra (Milan: Garzanti, 1988), and L'orso maggiore (Milan: Anabasi, 1994), most of which have been translated into French: Les règnes du sommeil (Paris: Verdier, 1986), L'Etourdi (Paris: Gallimard, 1989), Ciel ancien, terre nouvelle (Paris: Gallimard, 1990), and Le Grand Ours (Paris: Stock, 1995). Vecchio cielo, nuova terra has also appeared in a Spanish translation in 1994 (Viejo cielo, nueva tierra. Barcelona: Lumen, 1994).
Ginevra Bompiani is also the author of two children's books, Via terra (Turin: Einaudi, 1994) and L'amorosa avventura di una pelliccia e di un'armatura (Palermo: Sellerio, 2000). She is well known for her literary criticism as well. Among her essays are Lo spazio narrante (Milan: La Tartaruga, 1978), L'attesa (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1988), and Tempora (Milan: Anabasi, 1993).
