Copyright Notice

The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you for your personal use only. You may not make this e-book publicly available in any way. Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author’s copyright, please notify the publisher at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy.

Dedication

To Sara Calligarich

Epigraphs

The first great disaster to befall mankind

was not the flood but the drying out.

—SÁNDOR FERENCZI

As he rose and fell

He passed the stages of his age and youth

Entering the whirlpool.

—T. S. ELIOT

FOREWORD

By André Aciman

Last Summer in the City, by the Italian novelist, playwright, and screenwriter Gianfranco Calligarich, was first published in 1973. He had arrived in Rome in his early twenties as a correspondent for a small newspaper based in Milan, and not much later, when recalled to Milan by the paper, decided instead to stay in Rome to devote himself to a novel, probably his plan all along. When finished, however, the book was turned down by every Italian publisher until dropping into the hands of one of Italy’s most renowned writers and essayists, Natalia Ginzburg. She read it overnight, and her response was so enthusiastic that she got the publishing house Garzanti, which was initially underwhelmed by the novel, to publish it. Seventeen thousand copies were sold that summer, earning the young author a succès d’estime as well as a book prize. But not much later, the novel disappeared from the shelves and could be found only in scattered bookstalls and secondhand bookstores around Italy. Copies, however, were vigorously coveted by booklovers and reading groups, including some doctoral students, and the novel became the object of a cult among the literary cognoscenti. Then, nearly four decades later, in 2010, the prestigious small publishing house Nino Aragno Editore decided to reissue Last Summer. Deemed once again a highly crafted and serious novel, it was reviewed to great acclaim, with many critics openly kicking themselves for neglecting Calligarich’s work when it was first published. But once again, and despite being reviewed by almost all of Italy’s main dailies, the novel dropped from sight, only to be finally rereleased in 2016 by Bompiani as well as by a number of international publishing houses.

Calligarich is not a familiar Italian surname. It has Slovenian and Serbo-Croatian roots, and, like many surnames ending in ich, is frequently claimed by Italo-Slovenians whose lineage most likely goes back to the port city of Trieste. Many Italians continue to keep the Slavic surnames without necessarily feeling any connection to a Slavic ancestry.