La vita agra

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La vita agra: or, It’s a Hard Life
LaVitaAgra.jpg
First edition (Italian)
Author Luciano Bianciardi
Original titleLa vita agra
Translator Eric Mosbacher
LanguageItalian
GenreNovel
Publisher Rizzoli
Publication date
1962
Publication placeItaly
Published in English
1965
Pages200 pp.

La vita agra, known in English-speaking countries as It's a Hard Life, is a novel by Luciano Bianciardi published in 1962 by Rizzoli. It became a best-seller in Italy and it is considered one of the most important novels in contemporary Italian literature.

Contents

The novel was also made into a 1964 film of the same name, directed by Carlo Lizzani and starring Ugo Tognazzi and Giovanna Ralli.

Plot

An intellectual moves from a small Tuscan town to the industrial hub of Milan with the secret intention of carrying out an act of rebellion: bombing the headquarters of a mining company responsible for a tragic workplace explosion in his hometown.

Upon arriving in Milan, however, the protagonist becomes ensnared in the daily grind of urban life and the dehumanizing nature of neo-capitalism. His lofty revolutionary goals gradually give way to existential disillusionment as he takes on various writing and translating jobs in an alienating and oppressive corporate culture.

Reception

In 1962, when the novel was released it was praised by the public and the critics. It became a best-seller and was translated into English, French, German and Spanish. Italo Calvino wrote a review in which he regarded the novel positively and compared it to other works of the so-called letteratura industriale (Industrial literature), a current which spread at the beginning of the Italian economic miracle, such as Paolo Volponi's Memoriale and Giovanni Arpino's Una nuvola d'ira. He praised the all-encompassing language that succeeds masterfully in expressing and representing the industrial reality in a more complex way, even if he saw some weaknesses connected to the book's uncontainable autobiography that is limited, in his opinion, to a "private anarchist protest". [1]

English editions

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References

  1. Gino Ruozzi, Vite difficili nella letteratura del boom economico. Dalla dolce vita alla vita agra, in Carlo Varotti, La parola e il racconto. Scritti su Luciano Bianciardi, Bologna, Bononia University Press, 2005, pp. 29-36.