All the Errors »

Until the appearance of All the Errors in 1990, Giorgio Manganelli's works had been translated into every major Western language except English: Henry Martin's fluid translation redresses the oversight of this eloquent, meticulous Italian master, presenting a book of Manganelli's distinctively original shorter fictions. These are seven narratives of metaphysical exploration. One story is the valedictory monologue of a soul on the verge of being born; another tells of a labyrinth that enters itself, seeking to explain its own pathways; in still another, a man and a woman offer mirroring explanations of why they cannot love each other. These are tales of solitude, yet a solitude touched with hope, and they share an allegiance to the themes of Sartre, Camus, Kafka, and Calvino.

Library Journal

This is the first English translation of work by Manganelli, a well-known Italian author and critic, proponent of the neo-avant-garde. He sees literature as language only, an artificial construction and a mental game. His material is fragments of our consciousness and experience; he writes probing analyses of states of mind and relationship in showy, artful language. Only two of the book's seven monologs are understandable: the first, about a soul being born, and the last, a hauntingly beautiful tale about a betrothal. The rest are supercerebral and accessible only to the experts. Recommended for large literature collections in academic libraries.-- Ulla Sweedler, Univ. of Cali fornia-San Diego Lib.