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  • The Hunger of Women

& Other Stories Press

The Hunger of Women

by Marosia Castaldi.

Translated from Italian by Jamie Richards.

  • £14.99
  • Available
  • Paperback published on 17/10/2023
  • Page count: 256 pages
  • ISBN: 9781913505868
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Quick take

Midway through life, Rosa finds herself alone. With her husband long gone and her daughter moving to the city, she decides to leave Naples for the foggy plains of Lombardy. There, Rosa opens a restaurant, discovering new relationships with other women, from friendship to love.

Synopsis

Rosa, midway through life, is alone. Her husband passed away long ago, and her cosmopolitan daughter is already out the door, keen to marry and move to the city. At loose ends, Rosa decides to transplant herself to the flat, foggy Lombardy provinces from her native Naples and there finds a way to renew herself—by opening a restaurant, and in the process coming to a new appreciation of the myriad relationships possible between women, from friendship to caregiving to collaboration to emotional and physical love.

Unconventional in style and yet rivetingly accessible, The Hunger of Women is a novel infused with the pleasures of the body and the little shocks of daily life. Made up of Rosa’s observations, reflections, and recipes, it tracks her mental journey back to reconnect with her own embattled mother’s age-old wisdom, forward to her daughter’s inconceivable future, and laterally to the world of Rosa’s new community of lovers and customers. A tribute not only to the tradition of women’s writing on hearth and home but to the legacy of such boundary-breaking feminist writers as Gertrude Stein, Virginia Woolf, and Hélène Cixous, The Hunger of Women is nothing less than a literary feast.

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About the author

Marosia Castaldi, born in 1951, was a Neapolitan writer and artist who spent most of her life in Milan, where she died in 2019. Her degree, from the University of Naples, was in philosophy, and after moving to Milan in 1971, she studied art at the Brera Academy. She exhibited work in galleries across Europe and in the US and taught creative writing seminars at the Scuola Holden in Turin and Lalineascritta in Naples. 

More books published by & Other Stories Press

And Other Stories publishes mainly contemporary writing, including many translations. Their books aim to push people’s reading limits and help them discover authors of adventurous and inspiring writing.

View all books by & Other Stories Press

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