Italian · Intermediate
Read La madre in Italianwith every sentence explained
English title: The Mother
Grazia Deledda · 1920
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About the book
La madre by Grazia Deledda was first published in 1920. In Passage you read the full text in the original Italian, marked intermediate and filed under historical fiction and romance. It runs to about 36,700 words.
A young priest torn by forbidden love. A mother who gave her whole life for him.
In Aar, a tiny village lost among the Sardinian mountains, Maria Maddalena spent years as a servant so that her son Paulo could study and become a priest. Now he is the parish priest, and she keeps his house, humble, proud and devoted.
But lately Paulo has changed. He lingers in front of the mirror, wears perfume, lets his hair grow to hide his tonsure, and on windy nights he slips out of the house when he thinks she is asleep. His mother knows where he goes: to Agnese, a lonely young woman of the village. Sitting by the door in the dark, listening to the wind, she must decide how far she will go to save her son and his soul.
First published in 1920, The Mother is Deledda's most famous novel outside Italy; its English translation appeared with a preface by D. H. Lawrence.
- Author
- Grazia Deledda
- First published
- 1920
- Language
- Italian
- Level
- Intermediate
- Genre
- Historical Fiction, Romance
- Length
- About 36,700 words
How it opens
Anche quella notte, dunque, Paulo si disponeva ad uscire.
La madre, nella sua camera attigua a quella di lui, lo sentiva muoversi furtivo, aspettando forse, per uscire, ch’ella spegnesse il lume e si coricasse.
Ella spense il lume ma non si coricò.
Seduta presso l’uscio si stringeva una con l’altra le sue dure mani di serva, ancora umide della risciacquatura delle stoviglie, calcando i pollici uno sull’altro per farsi forza; ma di momento in momento la sua inquietudine cresceva, vinceva la sua ostinazione a sperare che il figlio s’acquetasse, che, come un tempo, si mettesse a leggere o andasse a dormire.
Reading La madre 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.
