The Church of Solitude

A translation of Grazia Deledda's final novel, an autobiographically based portrayal of an Italian woman coming to terms with breast cancer at the cusp of the twentieth century. The Church of Solitude tells the story of Maria Concezione, a young Sardinian seamstress living with breast cancer at the cusp of the twentieth century. Overwhelmed by the shame of her diagnosis, she decides that no one can know what has happened to her, but the heavy burden of this secrecy changes her life in dramatic ways and almost causes the destruction of several people in her life. This surprising novel paints the portrait of a woman facing the unknown with courage, faith, and self-reliance, and is the last and most autobiographical work of Grazia Deledda, who died of breast cancer in 1936, shortly after its publication. An afterword by the translator offers additional information on the author and examines the social and historical environment of that time. Grazia Deledda (1871–1936), the only Italian woman to have won the Nobel Prize for Literature (1926), is largely remembered today for her exalted prose and stark portraits of social change in early twentieth-century Sardinia. She wrote over sixty volumes, including novels, stories, and folklore of Sardinia, poetry, and essays. Her other translated works include After the Divorce; Cosima; Elias Portolu; Reeds in the Wind; and The Mother. E. Ann Matter is the R. Jean Brownlee Term Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. She has published several books, including The Voice of My Beloved: The Song of Songs in Western Medieval Christianity.