Seven survivors of the 1976 Friuli earthquake in northeastern Italy, which left hundreds dead and thousands unhoused, speak of their lives after the catastrophe in this poignant, propulsive work of fiction by a noted poet, translator, and novelist.
The brilliantly original book that emerges is both memorial and purgatorial mount..
Esther Kinsky splices these indelible, incomplete recollections with exacting descriptions of the alpine region, forgoing a linear narrative for a deftly layered collage that reaches back and forth in time.
Their memories, like the earth, are subject to rifts and abysses.
They speak of portents that preceded the earthquakes and of the complete disorder that followed, the obliteration of all that was familiar and known by heart.
Rombo is a record of this disaster and its aftermath, as told by seven men and women who were children at the time: Anselmo, Mara, Olga, Gigi, Silvia, Lina, and Toni.
About a thousand people died under the rubble, tens of thousands were left without shelter, and many ended up leaving their homes forever.
In May and September 1976, two severe earthquakes ripped through the Friuli region in northeastern Italy, causing extensive damage.
Il Rombo is an Italian term for the subterranean rumble before an earthquake.
Seven survivors of the 1976 Friuli earthquake in northeastern Italy, which left hundreds dead and thousands unhoused, speak of their lives after the catastrophe in this poignant, propulsive work of fiction by a noted poet, translator, and novelist
