Read I misteri del castello d'Udolfo, vol. 1 in Italianwith every sentence explained

I misteri del castello d'Udolfo, vol. 1 by Ann Radcliffe was first published in 1794. In Passage you read the full text in Italian, marked intermediate and filed under horror, mystery and crime and romance.

A promise to burn a father's papers unread, and a past he never dared to explain.

In 1584, on the banks of the Garonne in Guyenne, young Emily St. Aubert lives a quiet life of books and music with her loving parents. When her mother dies, her ailing father takes her on a journey through the Pyrenees, and along the way they meet Valancourt, a warm-hearted young traveller who quickly wins Emily's heart.

But St. Aubert is weaker than he admits, and his secret tears over the portrait of an unknown woman hint at a story he has never told. Before long Emily is alone in the world, bound by a solemn promise and placed in the care of her vain, cold aunt, Madame Cheron, in Toulouse, where a dark and imposing Italian named Montoni has begun to call.

This Italian translation contains the first volume of Ann Radcliffe's 1794 bestseller, the book that defined the Gothic romance. The castle of the title still lies ahead.

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.