Italian · Advanced
Read I vecchi e i giovani in Italianwith every sentence explained
English title: The Old and the Young
Luigi Pirandello · 1913
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About the book
I vecchi e i giovani by Luigi Pirandello was first published in 1913. In Passage you read the full text in the original Italian, marked advanced and filed under historical fiction. It runs to about 148,800 words.
Sicily in the 1890s. The heroes of unification have grown old, and the young no longer believe in anything.
Thirty years after Garibaldi, the dream of a united Italy has turned into poverty, corruption and backroom deals in rain-soaked Girgenti. Old Prince Ippolito Laurentano still waits for the Bourbons to return, shut away in his villa at Colimbètra with a private guard in Bourbon uniforms. On the family estate of Valsanìa, the fierce old Garibaldian Mauro Mortara keeps the memory of 1860 alive, while the powerful banker Flaminio Salvo pulls the strings of local politics and Roberto Auriti, son of a patriot family, is pushed to run for parliament.
Meanwhile the young are drawn to socialism and to the revolt of Sicilian peasants and sulphur miners, as a great banking scandal shakes Rome.
Luigi Pirandello's sweeping historical novel, moving between Girgenti and the capital, is a bitter and moving portrait of the broken promises of the Risorgimento.
- Author
- Luigi Pirandello
- First published
- 1913
- Language
- Italian
- Level
- Advanced
- Genre
- Historical Fiction
- Length
- About 148,800 words
How it opens
La pioggia, caduta a diluvio la notte scorsa, aveva reso impraticabile il lungo stradone, tutto a volte e risvolte, quasi in cerca di men faticose erte, di pendii meno ripidi, tra la scabra ineguaglianza della vasta campagna solitaria.
Il guasto dell’intemperie appariva tanto più triste, in quanto, qua e là, già era evidente il disprezzo e quasi il dispetto della cura di chi aveva tracciato e costruito la via per facilitare agli altri il cammino tra le asperità dei luoghi, con quei gomiti e quelle giravolte, con le opere or di sostegno, or di riparo. I sostegni eran crollati, i ripari abbattuti, per dar passo a dirupate scorciatoje.
Reading I vecchi e i giovani 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 advanced, with richer vocabulary and longer sentences. If it feels heavy, start with an intermediate Italian book and come back to it. The words you save come back later in short review games, so the book keeps teaching after you close it.
