El colorín afligido

At the end of the eighteenth century, a prince, a sculptor, and a wealthy merchant arrive in Naples from Flanders. They visit a celebrated glover, a widower with his two youngest daughters, Elmina and Teresa, still living at home with him. The visitors find themselves strangely drawn to Elmina in particular, maybe because she is so silent, burdened it would seem with a mysterious sorrow. Although it is the sculptor who is successful in obtaining her hand in marriage, it is the prince — aided by the necromantic skills of his friend the Polish duke — who with the passage of time pieces together, through the nexus of lies and half-truths, the tragic story of the young woman and of the caged linnet, at once victim and tyrant, that must bring despair to all who seek to befriend it. In the stark contrast between the transparent light of Naples and the dark forests of the north, still the haunt of elves and will-o-the-wisps, Anna Maria Ortese weaves her narrative with a dazzling sleight of hand, leaving the reader under the spell, of her enchantment.