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Flavia Brizio-Skov. Antonio Tabucchi. Navigazioni in un arcipelago narrativo.

Article Excerpt
Flavia Brizio-Skov. Antonio Tabucchi. Navigazioni in un arcipelago narrativo. Cosenza: Pellegrini, 2002.

Those who have been following Flavia Brizio-Skov's critical work on Tabucchi will be sure to greet this physically handsome and engagingly rifled volume with interest and pleasure--and will close it informed. Brizio-Skov's study of all of Tabucchi's fiction and most of his essays (the plays and the writings on Pessoa and other Portuguese writers are not considered) begins with the early novels of the 1970s and extends to Si sta facendo sempre piu tardi of 2001, though the latter collection came out only after Brizio-Scov's book was ready for press and her comments on it have had to have been limited to a long note. Nonetheless, there is no other work on Tabucchi of this range and depth available anywhere. For this reason, Navigazioni in un arcipelago narrativo is certain to become the standard reference work on this writer for researchers and other readers throughout North America and in Europe as well.

After an initial "Prologo," which presents a bird's eye view (it is subtitled "mappatura di un labirinto letterario") of Tabucchi's writings, imaginative universe, and critical reception, Brizio-Skov devotes the following six autonomous (in fact, perhaps a bit too compartmentalized) chapters to the fiction arranged by date of publication. The first two of these chapters treat Piazza d'Italia of 1975 and Il piccolo naviglio of 1978, two valuable works too often considered little more than episodes in this writer's pre-history. The next examines the stories and short novels of the 1980s. It is followed by a chapter devoted to Requiem of 1992, while Sostiene Pereira of 1994 and...