Italian · Advanced
Read Il marchese di Roccaverdina in Italianwith every sentence explained
English title: The Marquis of Roccaverdina
Luigi Capuana · 1901
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About the book
Il marchese di Roccaverdina by Luigi Capuana was first published in 1901. In Passage you read the full text in the original Italian, marked advanced and filed under historical fiction and mystery and crime. It runs to about 75,800 words.
A man has been murdered. Another is in prison for it. And the most powerful man in town cannot sleep.
In the small Sicilian town of Ràbbato, everyone bows to the Marquis of Roccaverdina, a proud, hot-tempered landowner. For years he lived with Agrippina Solmo, a beautiful peasant woman he could never marry because of his rank. To silence the gossip, he married her off to his loyal steward, Rocco Criscione, on one strict condition: that the marriage remain in name only.
Now Rocco has been ambushed and shot dead in the countryside, and a poor man who once quarrelled with him has been convicted. The case seems closed. But the marquis grows restless and haunted, and the town's gentle, saintly priest, Don Silvio, holds a secret he can never repeat. As the marquis tries to rebuild his life with a new bride, his conscience will give him no peace.
Luigi Capuana's masterpiece is a gripping psychological novel of guilt and obsession, a classic of Italian verismo.
- Author
- Luigi Capuana
- First published
- 1901
- Language
- Italian
- Level
- Advanced
- Genre
- Historical Fiction, Mystery and Crime
- Length
- About 75,800 words
How it opens
— C’è l’avvocato — annunziò mamma Grazia affacciandosi all’uscio.
E siccome il marchese non si voltò nè rispose, la vecchia nutrice, fatti pochi passi nella stanza, esclamò:
— Marchese, figlio mio, sei contento? Avremo finalmente la pioggia!
Infatti lampeggiava e tuonava da far credere che tra poco sarebbe piovuto a dirotto, e già rari goccioloni schizzavano dentro dall’aperta vetrata del terrazzino. Il marchese di Roccaverdina, con le mani dietro la schiena, sembrava assorto nel contemplare lo spettacolo dei fitti lampi che si accendevano nell’oscurità della serata, seguiti dal quasi non interrotto reoboare dei tuoni.
Reading Il marchese di Roccaverdina 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.
