Italian · Advanced
Read I Viceré in Italianwith every sentence explained
English title: The Viceroys
Federico De Roberto · 1894
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About the book
I Viceré by Federico De Roberto was first published in 1894. In Passage you read the full text in the original Italian, marked advanced and filed under historical fiction. It runs to about 206,100 words.
Kings fall, Italy unites, and one noble family makes sure that nothing really changes.
Catania, 1855. The Uzeda princes of Francalanza, descendants of the Spanish viceroys who once ruled Sicily, gather in their grand palace after the death of the family's iron-willed matriarch, Princess Teresa. Everyone wants to know what is in her will, and from the first pages the relatives circle each other like hungry birds.
There is the greedy new prince Giacomo, his rebellious younger brother, a fiery old uncle who is a monk in name only, a daughter forced into an unwanted marriage, and young Consalvo, the heir who learns the family lessons all too well. As Garibaldi arrives and the old Bourbon kingdom collapses, the Uzeda bend, scheme and adapt to keep their power.
Federico De Roberto's vast, ironic family saga is a forerunner of The Leopard and was adapted for film and television in 2007. The Viceroys is a sharp, often darkly funny portrait of Sicily.
- Author
- Federico De Roberto
- First published
- 1894
- Language
- Italian
- Level
- Advanced
- Genre
- Historical Fiction
- Length
- About 206,100 words
How it opens
Giuseppe, dinanzi al portone, trastullava il suo bambino, cullandolo sulle braccia, mostrandogli lo scudo marmoreo infisso al sommo dell’arco, la rastrelliera inchiodata sul muro del vestibolo dove, ai tempi antichi, i lanzi del principe appendevano le alabarde, quando s’udì e crebbe rapidamente il rumore d’una carrozza arrivante a tutta carriera; e prima ancora che egli avesse il tempo di voltarsi, un legnetto sul quale pareva fosse nevicato, dalla tanta polvere, e il cui cavallo era tutto spumante di sudore, entrò nella corte con assordante fracasso.
Reading I Viceré 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.
