<div>A “heartbreaking, heartrending, heart-stopping” memoir of a literature professor’s personal journey to hell and back (Vanity Fair). On a cold November morning, Joseph Luzzi, a Dante scholar and professor at Bard College, found himself racing to the hospital—his wife, Katherine, eight-and-a-half months pregnant, had been in a horrible car accident. In one terrible instant, Luzzi became both a widower and a first-time father. In the aftermath of unthinkable tragedy, Luzzi relied on the support of his Italian immigrant family, returning to his childhood home to grieve and care for his infant daughter. But it wasn’t until he turned to The Divine Comedy—a poem he had devoted his life to studying and teaching—that he learned how to resurrect his life. Following the same structure as Dante’s epic poem, Luzzi is shepherded out of his own “dark wood,” passing through the grief-stricken Inferno, the Purgatory of healing, and ultimately stepping into the Paradise of rediscovered love. In a Dark Wood is a hybrid of heartrending memoir and a meditation on the power of great art to give us strength in our darkest moments. Drawing us into hell and back, it is Dante’s journey, Joseph Luzzi’s, and our very own. “Luzzi unites emotion and ideas in a work that defies categorization, except for the category marked ‘brilliant.’ If every academic wrote like this, the humanities would be prospering.” —Gary Shteyngart, New York Times–bestselling author of Our Country Friends “Achingly beautiful.” —Entertainment Weekly “This is not an academic book about Dante. It’s an elegant and moving memoir of one man’s journey through grief and finally back to life.” —Albany Times-Union</div>

In a Dark Wood

<div>&ldquo;A funny and often moving family history that opens onto wider vistas that he knows and loves equally well&mdash;the Italian cultural and political landscape.&rdquo; &mdash;Ross King, New York Times&ndash;bestselling author The child of Italian immigrants and an award-winning scholar of Italian literature, Joseph Luzzi straddles these two perspectives to link his family&rsquo;s dramatic story to Italy&rsquo;s north-south divide, its quest for a unifying language, and its passion for art, food, and family. From his Calabrian father&rsquo;s time as a military internee in Nazi Germany&mdash;where he had a love affair with a local Bavarian woman&mdash;to his adventures amid the Renaissance splendor of Florence, Luzzi creates a deeply personal portrait of Italy that leaps past facile clich&eacute;s about Mafia madness and Tuscan sun therapy. He delves instead into why Italian Americans have such a complicated relationship with the &ldquo;old country,&rdquo; and how Italy produces some of the world&rsquo;s most astonishing art while suffering from corruption, political fragmentation, and an enfeebled civil society. With topics ranging from the pervasive force of Dante&rsquo;s poetry to the meteoric rise of Silvio Berlusconi, Luzzi presents the Italians in all their glory and squalor, relating the problems that plague Italy today to the country&rsquo;s ancient roots. He shares how his &ldquo;two Italies&rdquo;&mdash;the earthy southern Italian world of his immigrant childhood and the refined &ldquo;northern&rdquo; Italian realm of his professional life&mdash;join and clash in unexpected ways that continue to enchant the many millions who are either connected to Italy by ancestry or bound to it by love. &ldquo;In his elegant, thoughtful new memoir . . . Luzzi effectively covers lots of ground on Italian identity as a whole.&rdquo; &mdash;Mark Rotella, NPR</div>

Joseph Luzzi
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Books By Joseph Luzzi (2 Books)

In a Dark Wood

My Two Italies

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