Accabadora (eBook)

Winner of six major literary prizes, Accabadora weaves a narrative of rare grace and subtlety into a sensual tapestry of local atmosphere.When the once-beautiful Bonaria Urrai adopts Maria, the unloved fourth child of a widow, she tries to shield the girl from the truth about her role as an accabadora, an angel of mercy who acts as mid-wife to the dying. The rural community fear and revere her in equal measure, but they understand that just as only a woman can bring life into the world, only a woman should take it away. Moved by the pleas of a young man crippled in an accident, she breaks her golden rule of familial consent, and in the recriminations that follow, Maria rejects Tzia Bonaria and flees Sardinia for Turin. Adrift in the big city, she strives to find love and acceptance, but her efforts are overshadowed by the creeping knowledge of a debt unpaid, of family ties that have nothing to do with blood, and of a destiny that must one day be hers. A powerful and yet delicate novel set in 1950s rural Sardinia, written in a rich, limpid prose that perfectly captures the hidden ties between life, love and death.

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One of Elena Ferrante's best 40 books by female writersWhen Maria, the fourth child of a widow, is adopted by the old and childless Bonaria Urrai, her life is instantly transformed - she finally has the love and affection she craves. But her new 'soul mother' is keeping something hidden from her, a secret life that is intimately bound-up with Sardinia's ancient traditions and customs. Midwife to the dying, easing their suffering and sometimes ending it, she is revered and feared in equal measure as the village's Accabadora. Bonaria tries to shield the girl from the truth about her role as an angel of mercy, until, moved by the pleas of a young man crippled in an accident, she breaks her golden rule of familial consent. The consequences - for Bonaria, for Maria and for the whole village, are devastating - and cause a rift between the two women that can only be bridge by another death.Translated from the Italian by Silvester Mazzarella