The John D. Calandra Italian American Institute, Bordighera Press, and the Istituto Italiano di Cultura present the publication of The God of New York, an English translation of Professor Luigi Fontanella’s novel Il dio di New York (Passagli 2017). The book is a fictionalized account of the life of Italian American “pick and shovel” poet Pascal D’Angelo.

New York, 1910. Pasquale D’Angelo, a sixteen-year-old native of Abruzzo, arrives at Ellis Island together with his father and a group of their companions in search of a better life. The shock of the New World is brutal, one of the worst experienced by our emigrants; but at the same time, for Pasquale (who becomes “Pascal”) it’s powerfully attractive, electrifying. Unlike his buddies, whose sole aim is to improve their condition and to send some money back home to their families in Italy, Pascal develops a desire to become a writer, an American poet.

With titanic amounts of perseverance and an indestructible faith in poetry, Pascal will carry on until he reaches the limit of his sufferings. It’s a Promethean struggle, made more difficult by crippling poverty, a struggle that will lead the young stone cutter to leave his friends after a long and exhausting stint of manual labor and to retreat in the end to a miserable hovel in Brooklyn in order to take on the challenge of New York City and the “god” that rules it.

This event will not take place at the Calandra Institute. It will be held at the Italian Cultural Institute in New York, 686 Park Avenue, New York, NY, 10065 – USA, tel: +1 212-879-4242. Email: iicnewyork@esteri.it.