The Burning Brand

2021 Reprint of the 1961 Edition. Full facsimile of the original edition and not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. For Cesare Pavese introspection was the only way of life. It led not to escape through fantasy but to an intensification and "purification" of experience through an anguished search for the truth about himself and the world in which he lived. Pavese, who took his life in 1950, is often considered as the most elusively complex Italian writer of his generation, which counts such noted authors as Ignazio Silone, Alberto Moravia and Elio Vittorini. Pavese's suicide at the age of 42, a few weeks after he had received the Strega Prize, Italy's highest literary award, shocked the literary world. These are his diaries, published after his death, which reveal much of the emotional/intellectual life that drove his life and art.