New York Lectures and Interviews

Published for the 100^th anniversary of Giorgio Bassani’s birth, New York Lectures and Interviews is a collaboration between CPL Editions and the Italian Cultural Institute, with support from Fondazione Giorgio Bassani.

The book consists of lectures and interviews delivered in New York in 1966 and 1972. In these lectures, Bassani delved into questions of life, poetry, history, truth, and religion. The collection includes On Nazism and Fascism, a significant text from 1944 that Bassani saw as the ideological foundation for works such as The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, A Night in ’43, and A Plaque on Via Mazzini.

About the Author

Giorgio Bassani (1916–2000) was a novelist, poet, critic, and public intellectual. Best known for The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, his work offers a poignant chronicle of Italian life under Fascism and in its aftermath. His novel The Heron was included by Harold Bloom in The Western Canon, a testament to the lasting resonance of his literary voice.

Bassani portrayed his native Ferrara and its inhabitants with remarkable psychological depth, framing their lives against the broader crises of dislocation, solitude, and moral uncertainty. As an editor at Feltrinelli, he was instrumental in the publication of Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s The Leopard, which had previously been rejected by several major publishers.