Scott's Sun

Author: (French) Gode
Publisher:
Publishing Date: 2006-01-01
Features: This is the winning novel by Laurent Gode, telling the story of a notorious family that strives to change their fate through generations of relentless self-improvement and courageous resistance. The novel celebrates the indomitable spirit of the Scotta family members who, despite adversity, refuse to bow to fate, embodying an epic style and a strong humanistic color. Gode is a writer not unfamiliar to French readers. In 2002, his novel "The Death of King Eastgor" won the Goncourt Middle School Award and the Booksellers' Award and was translated into fifteen languages. "The Sun of the Scotta Family" was also widely acclaimed after its publication in August of this year, selling eighty thousand copies in just two months and being nominated for multiple literary awards. In 1870, in the south of Italy, a thief named Mascaro, who specialized in stealing chickens and robbing travelers, stole the girl Lucano from his neighbor, whom he had coveted for fifteen years. The wrong combination of "a deceitful man and a woman who accepted his lies" gave birth to the protagonist of the novel, Rocco Scotta Mascaro, who was worse than his father, a true bandit, and became a local bully, feared by everyone, until he married a mute woman and had three children. After their parents' death, the three children struggled to live in poverty and discrimination and were forced to leave their hometown. They emigrated to the United States, trying to find a place to settle, but due to their family's disreputable history, they were also treated roughly and disrespectfully in the United States, and in the end, they had to return to their hometown, determined to live stubbornly there, "This is the place where we can rest and recuperate, it can never be anywhere else." They opened a cigarette shop, persistently seeking happiness and joy. Due to the family's bad reputation, they were discriminated against and pushed everywhere, but they lived proudly despite all the pressure, "Under the sun of Montepulciano, people are like olives, eternal."