Franco Fortini – författare

A searing introduction to Franco Fortini, a Jewish communist and a major figure in postwar Italian intellectual life, The Dogs of the Sinai is a book against those who love to rush to the aid of the victors, against the widespread and racist contempt for Arabs, and against the celebration of modern civilization and technology that Israel embodies. It is also the book in which Fortini sought to clarify for himself his conflicted identity as an Italian Jew. An uncomfortably timely book, The Dogs of the Sinai combines polemic and autobiography with narrative and criticism in a terse and finely wrought reflection on politics, identity, and truthfulness in the period after the Six Day War of 1967. Fortini describes with rich personal detail the Nazi occupation of Italy and the rise of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, meditating on the birth of fascism and the increasing anti-Arabic influence in Europe. As topical today as it was forty-five years ago, this meditation against power is published alongside Fortini/Cani, a film by Jean-Marie Straub and Daniele Huillet, drawn from Fortini's essay.The film includes moving scenes of the author reading excerpts from his book against quiet landscapes. The Dogs of the Sinai is a powerful text from one of the most important intellectuals of the Italian New Left.

Originally published in Italian in 1965, A Test of Powers was immediately seen as one of the central texts of Italian intellectual life. By the time of the 1968 student revolts, it was clear that Franco Fortini had anticipated many of the themes and concerns of the New Left, which is no surprise, given that Fortini had spent more than two decades immersed in fierce ideological debates over anti-Fascism, organizing, the alliance between progressivism and literature, and other topics that found their way into A Test of Powers. In addition to politically focused essays, the book also features essays on a range of writers who influenced Fortini, including Kafka, Pasternak, Eric Auerbach, Proust, and Brecht.  Praise for Fortini’s The Dogs of the Sinai“An elegant and provocative project — the first book of Fortini’s prose to appear in English translation — that challenges one’s political assumptions about the conflict between Israel and Palestine, not only at the time of the Six-Day War but also today. . . . Toscano has done a masterful job of rendering Fortini’s often difficult prose into a fluid and concise English.”—Los Angeles Review of Books  “Forensic and devastating.”—Times Literary Supplement  “Fortini’s poetic production, literary criticism, political writings, translations, and journalism have assured him a position of the first rank among intellectuals of the Italian postwar period.”—Italica