The Round Dance

"Carmine Abate's The Round Dance is a mesmerizing, intergenerational modern epic of resistance and change, staying and leaving, recovery and dispersal. It kidnaps our senses and our mind's eye in the swirl of its poetic vitality and light-heartedness. La Luna's outstanding, sensitive translation is a true gift to English readers of all ages." -- Giovanna Miceli Jeffries * author of Bitter Trades: A Memoir *
"Carmine Abate invites readers to experience the Italo-Albanian world and to deepen their appreciation for the uniqueness of the Arbereshe community. Step back in time through the lively characters of this brilliantly written novel that explores themes of collective memory, myth and reality, migration, and cultural transmission." -- Mithat Gashi * Albanian American activist *
"Carmine Abate's novelistic debut is a groundbreaking postmodern 'metaphor of the world.' This Italo-Albanian 'round dance,' brilliantly translated by Michelangelo La Luna, offers a blueprint for how to deal with cultural belonging in a globalized world while holding aesthetic as well as moral, religious, and social value." -- Dagmar Reichardt * coeditor of Icone della transculturalita *
"The Arbereshe community has made southern Italy its home for six centuries by renewing its identity as a distinct ethnic, linguistic, and religious minority. Masterfully written, The Round Dance opens their world for English-speaking audiences and is a welcome addition to the canon of migrant literature." -- Ines Murzaku * coeditor of Greek Monasticism in Southern Italy *
"Through a lovely translation of Carmine Abate's poetic language, The Round Dance unveils to English readers the marvelous, centuries-long odyssey of the Albanian people in southern Italy and beyond, underscoring what some have called 'the powers of diaspora.'" -- Tullio Pagano * author of The Making and Unmaking of Mediterranean Landscape in Italian Literature: The Case of Ligu *