The Art of Joy

The tumultuous twentieth century, told through the life of a single extraordinary woman.

Winner, USA Best Book Award in Fiction

“From its explosive, disturbing opening to the quiet cadences of its lyrical prose, [ The Art of Joy] is crammed with passion, ideas, adventure, and mystery.” —San Francisco Chronicle

Rejected by a series of publishers, abandoned in a chest for twenty years, Goliarda Sapienza’s masterpiece, The Art of Joy, survived a turbulent path to publication. It wasn't until 2005, when it was released in France, that this novel received the recognition it deserves. At last, Sapienza's remarkable book is available in English.

The Art of Joy centers on Modesta, a Sicilian woman born in 1900 whose strength and character are an affront to conventional morality. Impoverished as a child, Modesta believes she is destined for a better life. She is able, through grace and intelligence, to secure marriage to an aristocrat without compromising her own deeply felt values, and revels in upsetting the rules of her fascist, patriarchal society. This is the history of the twentieth century, transfigured by the perspective of one extraordinary woman.

“An astute litany of the moral, political, and feminist issues of the last century.” —Booklist

“As errant, excessive, and irresistible as the woman at its heart, The Art of Joy more than lives up to the title. Modesta’s “intense feeling for life” overcomes whatever obstacles the ideologies of “sorrow, humiliation, and fear” can throw at her as she embraces “life’s fluidity.” —The Independent (London)