Review
This novel is one "long variation on the theme ["each man kills the thing he loves"], presented as a fable. We find in this little marvel, by turns, the abstract and conceptual tone of a moralist and the provocative fantasy of a sly storyteller." --Le Monde, July 17, 1992
Product Description
Annie Messina brings her readers into the world of A Thousand and One Nights for this tale of love, treachery, and intrigue, of scented gardens and splashing fountains. The Myrtle and the Rose “describes in highly aestheticized terms the love affair between a prince in an uncharted Arabian kingdom and a beautiful slave boy.” --Publishers Weekly
The author of three novels written under her own name, in 1982 Messina took the pseudonym Gamîla Ghâli, fearing the uproar this novel would cause. She left it to her friend, Leonardo Sciascia, to introduce Ghâli to the Italian reading public. Annie Messina brings both her Sicilian heritage and her years of living in Egypt to bear on this orientalizing fiction. With "The Myrtle & The Rose" she carries on the literary tradition of her aunt, Maria Messina (author of "A House in the Shadows"), and introduces the first of her “Islamic Trilogy” to the reading public.
A review in "Le Monde" of the French translation of "Il mirto e la rosa," places Annie Messina alongside authors such as Marguerite Yourcenar, Mary Renault and Mari Mori, women who wove novels about the passions of men, and describes this novel as a “long variation on the theme [each man kills the thing he loves], presented as a fable.… We find in this little marvel, by turns, the abstract and conceptual tone of a moralist and the provocative fantasy of a sly storyteller.”
Translated from the Italian by Jessie Bright.
The author of three novels written under her own name, in 1982 Messina took the pseudonym Gamîla Ghâli, fearing the uproar this novel would cause. She left it to her friend, Leonardo Sciascia, to introduce Ghâli to the Italian reading public. Annie Messina brings both her Sicilian heritage and her years of living in Egypt to bear on this orientalizing fiction. With "The Myrtle & The Rose" she carries on the literary tradition of her aunt, Maria Messina (author of "A House in the Shadows"), and introduces the first of her “Islamic Trilogy” to the reading public.
A review in "Le Monde" of the French translation of "Il mirto e la rosa," places Annie Messina alongside authors such as Marguerite Yourcenar, Mary Renault and Mari Mori, women who wove novels about the passions of men, and describes this novel as a “long variation on the theme [each man kills the thing he loves], presented as a fable.… We find in this little marvel, by turns, the abstract and conceptual tone of a moralist and the provocative fantasy of a sly storyteller.”
Translated from the Italian by Jessie Bright.
