Other formats

    Adobe Portable Document Format file (facsimile images)   TEI XML file   ePub eBook file  

Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

Salient. Victoria University of Wellington Student's Newspaper. Volume 31, Number 9. May 21 1968

[introduction]

Renato (Michael) Amato died suddenly in Wellington four years ago, at 35. This volume of his short stories, prepared by his close friend Maurice Shadbolt, is his only full length publication, although many of the stories appeared previously in Mate, Landfall and Arena.

Shadbolt's selection follows a closely autobiographical vein, from the youth in his early teens taught up in the turmoil of war-torn Italy to the embittered intellectual in up country North Island forced to submit to the "Wop" and "Eye-tie" antagonism of New Zealand construction workers to the mellowed, domesticated graduate in Kelburn, Wellington, married and author of the beautiful "A Walk in the Shadows".

His first writing—in Italian—was as a destitute writer in Turin and Rome, friend of Gio Romanelli and Cesare Pavese and embittered by the monstrosities of war-time Italy. Written at this time was the tragic "Perspective", also published in the second volume of New Zealand Short Stories. Published in the World's Classic's series. Here too was the scene of "A Matter of Grammar", typifving the Italy he attempted to disown by coming to New Zealand. In "A Matter of Grammar"—written years later in New Zealand—Amato wrote of being forced to watch the execution of a band of Fascists he had fought with only 15 days before: