Winner of the Premio Campiello Prize in 1984. Wild and passionate deeds of the past forsworn, the most handsome and eligible carpenter in Israel becomes betrothed to an innocent, a child bride who is bewitching in her honesty, incomparable in her womanly beauty and wisdom. Reluctantly, Maria goes away just before their wedding to care for a dear aunt in childbed. When she returns, Maria is pregnant. Her distraught lover imagines scenes of violence and rape but has to accept the solemn assurance "I haven't betrayed you." Their marriage is happy, though it is never consummated. The former libertine resigns himself to a lifetime of secual frustration for her would never betray his adored wife, or give up the intelligent but fey son he has adopted as his own... His name, of course, is Joseph. Pasquale Festa Campinile's prize-winning novel is a superb evocation of adolescence and maturity; of sorrow and betrayal, and the power of absolute love. For Love, Only For Love has been translated from the Italian by William Weaver, highly acclaimed translator of The Name of the Rose.

Fiction