Marta NIjhuis
PLAY IT AGAIN, BOMBE // An Elephant's Memory
Suonala ancora, Bombe [Play It Again, Bombe] is a short novel written by Marta Nijhuis as a part of her work on cultural memory. It is the story of an Indian elephant who arrived in Italy in 1939 to become the most loved Milanese of three generations of children who have known her at the then Public Zoo. It is the story of a white hunter, of his voyages and his extraordinary trades, of his strange friendship with a pachyderm that used to play a barrel organ and observed from behind her large metal wire glasses the secret folds of the human soul. It is the story of a lively, international Milan, of its sufferings during the years of the war, of its grief, and its rebirth.
Marta Nijhuis
Suonala ancora, Bombe
Memorie di un'elefantessa a Milano
Milano, Udine 2015
Mimesis/ Narrativa Meledoro
€ 5,90/ 60 p.
ISBN-10: 8857531449
ISBN-13: 9788857531441
"A rich tale brings back one of our most distinguished citizens: the elephant Bombe."
Alessandro Beretta, Il Corriere della Sera
"Marta Nijhuis' short prose seems capable of holding 'in a circle around [it] the thread of the hours, the order of years and of worlds.' Still, the sometimes Proustian tone of this book does not aim at literaralising reality, but deals with the capacity of provoking an unveiling of memory."
Luigi Azzariti-Fumaroli, Alfabeta2
"In Suonala ancora, Bombe the young author Marta Nijhuis undermines th[e] Cartesian, then Kantian image of the animal-machine. The protagonist of this short yet moving text is a first-generation Milanese, a naturalised Italian citizen whose sensitivity was shaped by the same historical experiences that defined the intellectual generation of Umberto Eco and Italo Calvino. Except that she was not a lady, but an elephant."
Professor Giovanna Borradori, Vassar College, NY
(From "Effetto-Bombe" [Bombe-effect], presentation to Marta's book)
"An example of the kind of art that refuses the surrogate, the skimmed, the watered, caffein and gluten-free, the stench of the politically correct."
Matteo Guarnaccia