Italian · Intermediate
Read Elias Portolu in Italianwith every sentence explained
Grazia Deledda · 1903
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About the book
Elias Portolu by Grazia Deledda was first published in 1903. In Passage you read the full text in the original Italian, marked intermediate and filed under historical fiction and romance. It runs to about 46,100 words.
Home from prison, he falls for the one woman he can never have.
After years in a prison on the mainland, Elias Portolu comes back to his family's sheepfolds near Nuoro, pale, gentle and longing for a fresh start. Then he meets Maddalena, the lively young woman about to marry his brother Pietro, and a love neither of them can fight takes hold.
Torn between desire and conscience, Elias listens to two very different voices: a village priest who urges him toward the Church, and the old shepherd zio Martinu, who tells him to follow his heart. Every road seems to lead either to sin or to sorrow.
The novel that made Grazia Deledda famous across Europe, Elias Portolu is a stark, lyrical story of guilt and passion, set among the shepherds, feasts and rugged hills of Sardinia.
- Author
- Grazia Deledda
- First published
- 1903
- Language
- Italian
- Level
- Intermediate
- Genre
- Historical Fiction, Romance
- Length
- About 46,100 words
How it opens
Giorni lieti s’avvicinavano per la famiglia Portolu, di Nuoro. Agli ultimi di aprile doveva ritornare il figlio Elias, che scontava una condanna in un penitenziario del continente; poi doveva sposarsi Pietro, il maggiore dei tre giovani Portolu.
Si preparava una specie di festa: la casa era intonacata di fresco, il vino ed il pane pronti; pareva che Elias dovesse ritornare dagli studi, ed era con un certo orgoglio che i parenti, finita la sua disgrazia, lo aspettavano.
Reading Elias Portolu 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.
