Arturo's Island reading schedule
Arturo’s Island was first published in Italian in 1957. A translation by Isabel Quingly was published in 1959 by Alfred A. Knopf, with new editions of the same translation released in 1988 by Carcanet Press and in 1998 by Zoland Books.
For this read-through I will be using the most recent translation by Ann Goldstein, distributed by Pushkin Press in the UK and Liveright in the US, and also readily available in eBook format. You can choose whichever edition, language and translation is easier for you to find. If you’d like to join and can’t find a copy, please let me know and I’ll locate one for you.
Start here!
Chapter 1 part 1.Start reading from King and Star of the Sky on page 1 and stop when you reach Immacolatella on page 37. (Stop at the words “Then, returning to land, desperate, she would have remained on the pier weeping and calling me, until death.”)
Chapter 1 part 2.Read from Immacolatella on page 37 to the end of Final Events on page 64. (“So, he told me, I was to go and wait for them at the dock the following Thursday; they would arrive on the three o’clock steamer.”)
Chapter 2 part 1.Start reading from A Winter Afternoon on page 65 and stop when you reach The Suitcase on page 85. (“Because she wasn’t yet used to the house and was afraid to be alone in a room, now that it was almost dark.”)
Chapter 2 part 2.From The Suitcase on page 85 to the end of Night on page 125. (“This last sound I like pretty well; it makes me think of an animal that is half wild and half domesticated: for example a cat, or a goat.”)
Chapter 3.From Family Life on page 126 to the end of Solitary Song on page 167. (“There was no way of making her understand how pitiless my heart was.”)
Chapter 4 part 1.Start reading from The Hairstyle on page 168 and stop when you reach The Sea Urchin on page 195. (“And even then I understood nothing; I couldn’t foresee the sorrows, the torment, that the future days were already preparing for me.”)
Chapter 4 part 2.From The Sea Urchin on page 195 to the end of The Conversion on page 217. (“Because although that child, in his simplicity, didn’t understand the great intention of the sacrament, the priest did; and God understood it—that was the important thing!”)
Chapter 5.From Tragedies on page 218 to the end of The Catastrophe on page 250. (“And, giving me a look of glassy, in fact unnatural severity, she fled from me, as from an enemy.”)
Chapter 6.From The Fatal Kiss on page 251 to the end of The Indian Slave on page 287. (“And it seemed to me that all the male and female angels of her imagination, like flocks of shining owls, storks, and seagulls, flew around her, urging her day and night to abhor me.”)
Chapter 7.From Dearer than the Sun on page 288 to the end of The Wretched Voice and the Signals on page 307. (“And at that discovery, I don’t know why, my affection for him, which I had believed suffocated and almost gone, was rekindled, more bitter, anguished, almost terrible!”)
Chapter 8.From Hated Shadow on page 308 to the end of the book.
