Changes

|title=The Story of My Purity

|sort=Story of My Purity, The

|publisher=Hamish Hamilton

|date=May 2013

|summary=An introspective, Catholic tale of guilt and sexual repression, but unfortunately the Italian humour doesn't translate well into English.

}}

In Francesco Pacifico's translated Italian novel ''The Story of My Purity'', Piero Rosini is a 30 year old, ultraconservative Catholic working for a radical Catholic publishing house. His marriage is devoid of physical contact, and he yearns for his virginal sister-in-law. Largely to escape these longings, he heads for Paris, never the first choice of one seeking to preserve their purity, where he is further tempted by a slightly unlikely group of girls, and one in particular, which is further complicated for him by the fact that she is Jewish. Almost living a separate life in his head, he cannot escape either the intellectual or physical constraints of his old life in Rome.

If you enjoyed this then you may well enjoy [[The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson]]. For more Italian modern fiction in translation, check out [[Outsiders by Roberto Saviano, Carlo Lucarelli, Valeria Parrella, Piero Colaprico, Wu Ming, Simona Vinci]].

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