Blue Hunger

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Non mi hanno convinta però alcuni elementi chiave come la lingua cinese, Shangai e la morte del fratello, Ruben: topoi trattati con eccessiva fretta e superficialità ma non senza motivo, anzi, semplicemente non c'è stato uno spazio adeguato per svilupparli e mostrare davvero il loro potenziale narrativo, allegorico e in generale espressivo. The writing is beautiful and the way it talks about change and the correlation between food and eating and lustfull consumption, is just incredible. Food, biting, and consumption, perhaps unsurprisingly, remain motifs throughout, an uneasy blend of delicacy, sensuality, and the grotesque. Di Grado ( Hollow Heart) delivers a sensuous and biting account of a young woman from Rome who, in the throes of grief, leaves home to teach Italian in Shanghai, where she falls in lust with a student at the language school.

Di Grado's black comedy, pungent metaphors and controlled ambiguity announce the arrival of a considerable talent. Despite its shortcomings, Blue Hunger makes for an interesting look at an intriguing city, and at a woman trying not to lose herself completely in its snares, and in her grief. But since I knew what was going to be in it I could protect myself and prepare myself a bit more to better handle how it impacted me. As I stepped out on to the dark street, and she handed her phone to the driver to pay, I touched my face to find a tear. I si la meva tristesa, si la tristesa que atribueixo per comoditat a la pèrdua del meu germà, en realitat fos una tristesa més antiga, un costum de sentir-me per a ús i gaudi dels altres?Xin da Roma vola a Shangai credendo di scappare dal dolore lancinante per la morte del fratello gemello Ruben, si crea una nuova identità, si lancia in un amore tossico e autodistruttivo ma ben presto comprende che la sua fame d'amore non può essere colmata. It’s all nicely done, if slightly gruesome at times, but it does give off distinct ‘lost in translation’ vibes on occasion. Loss: I don't think we ever find out Ruben's real name because the entire time, she takes on her twin brother's identity.

A 2021 NEA fellow, she holds an MFA in Literary Translation from the University of Iowa and a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Oregon. A young woman, grieving the loss of her twin brother, leaves Italy and heads to the one place he’d always wanted to go – Shanghai. It can seem at times like a futuristic, alien realm, one that defies explanation, but later Xu helps her to see it from a rather different perspective. Dovrebbe trattare del lutto e della riscoperta di sé stessi ma tutto ciò di cui si concentra la protagonista è la ragazza cinese, antipatica e tossica.

On the raucous square there were Irish pubs and cocktail bars and dark dance clubs with flashing lights. I would definitely go back to specific excerpts though because the author and translator genuinely did such a wonderful job with this book.

il cuore il vero protagonista del libro, un cuore spezzato, sanguinante ma ancora vibrante e bisognoso di amore. Blue Hunger by Viola Di Grado captures perfectly the isolating and strange feelings the narrator experiences through the combined affects of bereavement and living in a foreign place, culture and language. The writhing blend of lust and pain, loneliness and nihilism, was a great example of how grief sometimes creates an all-encompassing need to be distracted, touched, eaten.That Xu is undeniably wrong for Ruben matters little; Blue Hunger is a novel about wrongness, just as it is about displacement, and the depths we sink to when assailed by inescapable grief.