Alberto Moravia: a collection of travel writings is published in Brazil

Americhe is a collection of travel writings by Alberto Moravia, previously unpublished in Portuguese and dating from the period between 1938 and 1970. It has been published by the Brazilian publisher Cosac (edited and translated by Adriana Marcolini). From the United States to Mexico, from Brazil to Cuba, Guatemala and Bolivia, Moravia travels across the American continent, offering a perceptive account of ancestral cultures and nations in the process of consolidation.

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The round-the-world journey of the Roman journalist, writer and screenwriter Alberto Moravia (1907–1990) – author of the famous novels Contempt (1954) and The Conformist (1951), adapted for the cinema by Jean-Luc Godard and Bernardo Bertolucci – began early. At the age of just 23, Moravia was invited to work at the Turin-based daily newspaper *La Stampa*, where he began writing numerous travelogues. His thirst for travel – and for storytelling – was immense, as if he were seeking to make up for nine years of immobility imposed by bone tuberculosis discovered during his childhood. In 1930, with his new identity and weary of the oppressive atmosphere of the Fascist dictatorship, he accepted an invitation to travel to England, a country that inspired his first travel stories. It was the start of a long journey that would take him far and wide across Europe, the Middle East, Asia and the Americas.