The Edge of the Horizon - Antonio Tabucchi

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The Edge of the Horizon

by
Antonio Tabucchi

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Title:	The Edge of the Horizon
Author:	Antonio Tabucchi
Genre:	Novel
Written:	1986 (Eng. 1990)
Length:	83 pages
Original in:	Italian
Availability:	The Edge of the Horizon - US
	The Edge of the Horizon - UK
	The Edge of the Horizon - Canada
	The Edge of the Horizon - India
	Le fil de l'horizon - France
	Der Rand des Horizonts - Deutschland
	Il filo dell'orizzonte - Italia

Translated by Tim Parks
Italian title: Il filo dell'orizonte

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Our Assessment:

B : elusive, thoughtful small novella

See our review for fuller assessment.

Review Summaries
Source	Rating	Date	Reviewer
Rev. of Contemp. Fiction	.	Fall/1990	Irving Malin

From the Reviews:

"This short novel is a disturbing exploration of distances, exiles, "edges"." - Irving Malin, Review of Contemporary Fiction

Please note that the illustrative quote chosen here is merely one the complete review subjectively believes represents the tenor and judgment of the review as a whole. We acknowledge (and remind and warn you) that it may, in fact, be entirely unrepresentative of the actual review by any other measure.

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The complete review's Review:

In The Edge of the Horizon Spino, a morgue attendant, wonders about a corpse brought in after a police shoot-out. He realizes:

(...) it was one small death in the huge belly of the world, an insignificant corpse with no name and no history.

       Nevertheless, he is curious about the man, and it also leads him to wonder about his own life and existence. Some information about the dead man is revealed -- how he died, that he had the (surely false) name of Carlo Nobodi. Spino also tries to find out more on his own, talking to those that knew him, uncovering some background. He finds a bond with the dead man and his fate.
       What he learns moves Spino also to take action, a philosophical decision perhaps appropriate for one whose name certainly also points to Spinoza.
       Dark, thoughtful, nicely written, The Edge of the Horizon is a fairly powerful little novella. It is both cerebral and touching, though it is perhaps too carefully presented, without quite the same assurance of Tabucchi's later, more accessible work.

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Links:

The Edge of the Horizon:

New Directions publicity page
Feltrinelli publicity page

Reviews:

Antonio Tabucchi:

The complete review's Antonio Tabucchi page
Antonio Tabucchi at books and writers

Other books by Antonio Tabucchi under review:

Other books of interest under review:

See Index of Italian literature at the complete review

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About the Author:

Italian author Antonio Tabucchi lived 1943 to 2012.

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