Behind the Door     by Giorgio Bassani, Translated by William Weaver Original title: Dietro la porta Original language: Italian Published by Texas Bookman Pub. Date: March 1996 Format: Paperback ISBN: 0704301768 List Price: $2.98, £6.95 Buy online from Amazon.co.uk for £6.95 Published by Harcourt Pub. Date: 1991 Format: Paperback, 150 pages Dimensions: (in inches): 0.37 x 7.19 x 4.29 ISBN: 0156116855 Edition: REPRINT List Price: $3.95 Buy online from Amazon.com for $3.95 Published by Quartet Pub. Date: 1992 Pub. Place: UK Format: Paperback, 154 pages List Price: £6.95 Not available for ordering

Set, like Garden Of The Finzi-Continis, in Bassani’s native city of Ferrara, these are the experiences and feelings of a competitive, intelligent schoolboy growing up in the early 1930s. Bassani demonstrates his brilliance as a writer, his skill in evoking worlds, the thrill of little triumphs like being top of the class in maths, the confused fascination felt for a schoolfriend’s beautiful mother...There isn’t the elegiac melancholy of Garden here but prepare to be absorbed nevertheless by William Weaver’s lively, charming translation.

‘...they didn’t give a damn, Legnani and Bertoni: the first was about to get married — so we heard — and the second, with her wasp waist, her black shiny bangs, and her malicious eyes like the movie star Elsa Merlini’s, would hardly sit through the Fifth again. She was the sort to slip off to Rome and become an actress — as we had heard her declare many a time — instead of staying there to gather mould behind the door of the Liceo!’ p8