1987 "First English language edition" stated; Translated by John Shepley; The Marlboro Press publishers, Marlboro, Vermont; hardbound in midnight blue boards with gilt stamp lettering along spine; very good condition with unmarked pages; dust jacket very good.
 
Description -
The first of his three classic autobiographical novels, The Fifth Estate chronicles the passing in our own time of an ageless civilization, that of the peasant world Camon was born into. The trilogy--which also includes Life Everlasting and Memorial--has appeared in translation worldwide since its publication in the 1970s.
 
Dust flap -
The Fifth Estate is the chronicle of a post-war childhood in a lowland village to the west of Padua.  The milieu is that of a rurla sub-proletariat living in conditions one hesitates even to call "medieval" or "Third World," such is its remove from the civilization that defines our times.  Actually, as the narrator makes clear, the history of this peasant community transpires "outside time" - and within a framework of "fable," fable being the "reality" this community bathes in...