Summary of Beautiful Antonio
“Beautiful Antonio” is a tragicomic novel about a handsome young man, Antonio Magnano, from the Sicilian town of Catania in the early 1930s. He enjoys a reputation as a great lover and something of a playboy, desired by women and envied by men. However, after three years of marriage to his wife Barbara, it is revealed that he is sexually impotent, a discovery that leads to shame, scandal and condemnation among his fellow Sicilians.
Reasons to read Beautiful Antonio
“Beautiful Antonio” is an entertaining and deeply moving satire of Sicilian machismo and distorted ideals of masculinity and, more broadly, of Italian society under Mussolini’s Fascist regime. It is the best-known novel by the Sicilian author Vitaliano Brancati and is widely regarded as a classic of twentieth-century Italian literature. It was awarded the Premio Bagutta in 1950 and was adapted into an Italian film in 1960 starring Marcello Mastroianni and Claudia Cardinale. Other notable works by Brancati include “Don Giovanni in Sicilia” and “The Lost Years”.
Original title: Il bell’Antonio
Year of publication: 1949
Nr of pages: 304
