The Beginnings - (Games of Eternity) by Antonio Moresco (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

The first book in Antonio Moresco's colossally disruptive Games of Eternity (Giochi dell'eternità) trilogy, translated into English for the first time.

Upon its publication in Italy, The Beginnings was exactly that: the dawning of a new era. Like a photo-negative of Franz Kafka, or Virginia Woolf, Moresco's sweeping novel turns the stream-of-consciousness inside out, and offers nothing interior. Here, much like in real life, you will not be privy to the thoughts and feelings of others. Everything must be experienced as it happens.

From our narrator's undergraduate years in seminary school, to his activities as a member of various Italian political factions, to his attempts to become a writer, The Beginnings is a shapeshifting journey across the 20th century, and across all of literature itself.

About the Author

Antonio Moresco was born in Mantua and lives in Milan. Considered one of the founders of modern Italian literature, The Beginnings is his second book to be published by Deep Vellum, after Clandestinity, a collection of short stories. He has gone on to publish several more books, among them the short novel La cipolla (The Onion), the autobiographical Lettere a nessuno (Letters to No One), and Distant Light, which was published by Archipelago in 2013.

Max Lawton is a translator, novelist, and musician. He received his BA in Russian Literature and Culture from Columbia University and his MPhil from Queen's College, Oxford, where he wrote a dissertation comparing Céline and Dostoevsky. He has translated many books by Vladimir Sorokin. Max is also the author of two novels currently awaiting publication and is writing his doctoral dissertation on phenomenology and the twentieth-century novel at Columbia University, where he also teaches Russian. He is a member of four noise-music ensembles.