From “the unpublished edition” to “the iconic book of the twentieth century”: The reception history of Gustaw Herling’s Un mondo a parte in Italy

Abstract

The article presents the reception history of one book (“Un mondo a parte”) in four different historical periods. The key social, political, and historical transformations in post‑war Italy will provide an important context for the reflection. “The unpublished edition” from 1958 is now part of the canon of twentieth‑century world literature. The belated and turbulent reception history of “Un mondo a parte” in Italy was conditioned by ideology and can also be read as the story of the slow discovery of Gustaw Herling as a writer whose books are published in Italian.