Böcker av Edmondo De Amicis

This account of de Amicis's work avoids the dreary catalogue of topographical description and provides us with a work brimming with amusing anecdote and remains fresh and enlivening despite the passage of the years.

Written following the Italian war for independence by a sub-lieutenant who had fought in the siege of Rome in 1870, Heart is the fictional diary of a boy's third year in a Turin municipal school. It was written to foster juvenile appreciation of the newfound Italian national unity, which the author had fought for in the recent war. The book is often highly emotional, even sentimental, but gives a vivid picture of urban Italian life at that time. A master, introducing a new pupil, tells the class, "Remember well what I am going to say. That this fact might come to pass--that a Calabrian boy might find himself at home in Turin, and that a boy of Turin might be in his own home in Calabria, our country has struggled for fifty years, and thirty thousand Italians have died." The novel became internationally popular, and has been translated into over twenty-five languages, and is part of the UNESCO Collection of Representative Works. Edmondo de Amicis (1846-1908) established a reputation as a writer in various genres after his experience as a soldier.

A remarkable nineteenth-century account of Istanbul - which begins with a dazzling description of the city gradually appearing through the fog as the author's ship approaches the harbour - Constantinople expertly combines personal anecdote, breathtaking visual observation and entertaining historical information.

As a first-time visitor to London, De Amicis was awestruck by the bustle and magnificence of the Victorian metropolis and wrote a number of sketches in his trademark witty, observational style, which made him one of the best-selling travel writers of his age. First ever translation into English.