{"product_id":"distant-fathers-9781939931948","title":"Distant Fathers","description":"\u003cp\u003e\"A beautifully ingenious memoir, saturated in the history of the European 20th century, and made all the more compelling by Ann Goldstein's luminous translation.\"\u003cbr\u003e--\u003cb\u003eVivian Gornick, author of \u003ci\u003eFierce Attachments\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis singular autobiography unfurls from author Marina Jarre's native Latvia during the 1920s and '30s and expands southward to the Italian countryside. In distinctive writing as poetic as it is precise, Jarre depicts an exceptionally multinational and complicated family: her elusive, handsome father--a Jew who perished in the Holocaust; her severe, cultured mother--an Italian Protestant who translated Russian literature; and her sister and Latvian grandparents. Jarre tells of her passage from childhood to adolescence, first as a linguistic minority in a Baltic nation and then in traumatic exile to Italy after her parents' divorce. Jarre lives with her maternal grandparents, French-speaking Waldensian Protestants in the Alpine valleys southwest of Turin, where she finds fascist Italy a problematic home for a Riga-born Jew. This memoir--likened to \u003ci\u003eSpeak, Memory\u003c\/i\u003e by Vladimir Nabokov or Annie Ernaux's \u003ci\u003eThe Years\u003c\/i\u003e and now translated into English for the first time--probes questions of time, language, womanhood, belonging and estrangement, while asking what homeland can be for those who have none, or many more than one.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eReading group guide to \u003ci\u003eDistant Fathers\u003c\/i\u003e is available for download free of charge at newvesselpress.com.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eJarre, Marina:\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e - \u003cb\u003eMarina Jarre\u003c\/b\u003e was born in Riga, Latvia, in 1925, and lived in Italy from 1935 until her death at the age of 90 in 2016. Cultural identity, personal character, psychology, and autobiographical themes are central elements of her novels and stories.\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eGoldstein, Ann:\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e - \u003cb\u003eAnn Goldstein\u003c\/b\u003e has translated \u003ci\u003eThe Neapolitan Novels\u003c\/i\u003e and other works by Elena Ferrante, as well as writings by Primo Levi, Giacomo Leopardi, Pier Paolo Pasolini and Anna Maria Ortese. She is a former editor at \u003ci\u003eThe New Yorker\u003c\/i\u003e.","brand":"New Vessel Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50660201464082,"sku":"9781939931948","price":12.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_d8630d4e-0548-498c-970f-15a188fc925a.jpg?v=1733472335","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/distant-fathers-9781939931948","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}