Italian · Intermediate
Read Cenere in Italianwith every sentence explained
English title: Ashes
Grazia Deledda · 1904
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About the book
Cenere by Grazia Deledda was first published in 1904. In Passage you read the full text in the original Italian, marked intermediate and filed under historical fiction and romance. It runs to about 69,500 words.
A magical St John's Eve. A child abandoned with an amulet on his chest. A lifelong search for a mother.
On St John's Eve, in the wild Sardinian countryside near Nuoro, fifteen-year-old Olì falls for a farmhand who has lied to her about his name and hidden the fact that he has a wife. Disgraced and alone, she gives birth to a son, Anania, and raises him in the mountain village of Fonni.
When the boy is still small, Olì takes him to Nuoro, leaves him with his father, the miller, and vanishes. Anania grows up among sacks of olives and neighbourhood gossip, a clever, sensitive boy who always keeps a little amulet hidden on his chest. He dreams of school, of pretty Margherita, the daughter of the rich family he serves, and above all of one day finding the mother who left him.
One of Grazia Deledda's best-known novels, Ashes was filmed in 1916 with the great actress Eleonora Duse, in her only screen role.
- Author
- Grazia Deledda
- First published
- 1904
- Language
- Italian
- Level
- Intermediate
- Genre
- Historical Fiction, Romance
- Length
- About 69,500 words
How it opens
Cadeva la notte di San Giovanni. Olì uscì dalla cantoniera biancheggiante sull'orlo dello stradale che da Nuoro conduce a Mamojada, e s’avviò pei campi. Era una ragazza quindicenne, alta e bella, con due grandi occhi felini, glauchi e un po’ obliqui, e la bocca voluttuosa il cui labbro inferiore, spaccato nel mezzo, pareva composto da due ciliege. Dalla cuffietta rossa, legata sotto il mento sporgente, uscivano due bende di lucidi capelli neri attortigliati intorno alle orecchie: questa acconciatura ed il costume pittoresco, dalla sottana rossa e il corsettino di broccato che sosteneva il seno con due punte ricurve, davano alla fanciulla una grazia orientale.
Reading Cenere in Passage
Passage sets the book as a quiet, paginated reader in Italian. Read at your own pace, and when a sentence stops you, tap it. You get:
- a natural translation of that exact sentence,
- a short note on the grammar, in plain words,
- the key words, which you can save with the sentence they came from,
- all of it in English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Turkish or Portuguese, whichever you read best.
It's marked intermediate: comfortable once everyday Italian feels familiar, with the harder sentences one tap away. The words you save come back later in short review games, so the book keeps teaching after you close it.
