The Edge of the Horizon

Front Cover
New Directions Publishing, Aug 27, 2015 - Fiction - 96 pages

New Directions is proud to be the publisher of the the distinguished Italian novelist Antonio Tabucchi, whose works include The Edge of the Horizon, a story of an “unimportant death,” now available for the first time in a paperback edition.  

Late on night, the body of a young man is delivered to the morgue of an Italian town. The next day's newspapers report that he was killed in a police raid, and that went by the obviously false name "Carlo Nobodi." Spino, the morgue attendant on duty at the time, becomes obsessed with tracing the identity of the corpse. "Why do you want to know about him?" asks a local priest. "Because he is dead and I'm alive," replies Spino. In this spare yet densely packed cautionary tale, Tabucchi reminds us that it is impossible to reach the edge of the horizon since it always recedes before us, but suggests that some people "carry the horizon with them in their eyes."

 

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Other editions - View all

The Edge of the Horizon
Antonio Tabucchi
No preview available - 1990
The Edge of the Horizon
Antonio Tabucchi
No preview available - 2015
The Edge of the Horizon
Antonio Tabucchi
No preview available - 1990

Common terms and phrases

Antonio Tabucchi Argentina bell tower Brylcreem called Carlito calmly cemetery cigarette climb Cordoba corpse Corrado counter courtyard customers dark dead docks door drawer dream eyes face Faldini film front gallery gesture glass granita hair hand harbor Harpo hazelnut he’d head Hecuba inscription inside jacket knew leaving life’s light little old Madonna Magic Lantern man’s morgue Myrna Loy narrow street never night Noboldi noise ocean liner old woman paper Pasquale past perhaps photograph Poerio police priest remember ring round Samarkand Sara seems sense Signora Egle slipped slowly smiling someone Spino asked Spino looked Spino says strange talk tarot tell terrace There’s a seagull they’re things thinks thought tiredness told tomorrow took trattoria Vico Virginia Mayo voice waiting walked walls wasn’t watching wearing What’s whisper window wouldn’t

About the author (2015)

Antonio Tabucchi was born in Pisa in 1943 and died in Lisbon, his adopted home, in 2012. Over the course of his career he won France’s Medicis Prize for Indian Nocturne, the Italian PEN Prize for Requiem, and the Aristeion Prize for Pereira Maintains. A staunch critic of the former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, he once said that “democracy isn’t a state of perfection, it has to be improved, and that means constant vigilance.”

Tim Parks is the author of more than twenty novels and works of nonfiction, including the best-selling Italian Neighbors and An Italian Education. His novels include Europa which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. His essays have appeared in the The New Yorker and the New York Review of Books. Parks is also a renowned translator from the Italian and lives in Verona.

Bibliographic information

TitleThe Edge of the Horizon
AuthorAntonio Tabucchi
Translated byTim Parks
PublisherNew Directions Publishing, 2015
ISBN081122452X, 9780811224529
Length96 pages
Subjects › 

Fiction / General
  
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