The Woman Of Rome
(Alberto Moravia)
Last week I finished reading Alberto Moravia's The Woman of Rome. It was an old tattered copy which I picked up from the Sunday book bazaar in Delhi. As they rightly say, one shouldn't judge the book by its cover. It proved right in the case of Alberto Moravia. The contents of this almost crumbling book were just mind blowing. Set in Mussolini's Italy, The Woman of Rome, is the story of Adriana a poor yet young and beautiful Italian woman who is pushed into posing nude for artists by her over ambitious mother. However, a friend plots against the simple minded Adriana and pushes her into prostitution. Soon Adriana starts enjoying her profession especially the freedom she has to choose the men she wants to sleep with. The story proceeds from one twist to another as Adriana gets involved with crime and criminals and ultimately gets pregnant with a criminals child.
The most attractive thing about this unputdownabale, rivetting book is the way Moravia goes deep into analysing Adriana's mind, her feelings for her body, the first time she strips for an artist, her feelings the day she is pushed into prostitution and the power she feels when she's paid for the same. Later Moravia delves in detail over her feeling when her lover cheats on her, her pregnancy. The beauty of the novel is in the brilliance with which Moravia has explained every nuance of a complicated life and mind of simpleton in Mussolini's time.
The men who with whom Adriana gets involved with are a sign of those times. The political police, the criminal, the revolutionary all sleep in the same bed and all three desire Adriana and her body. One could read it as a metaphor for the struggle for power between the government, the criminals and the revolutionaries over the country personified in Adriana.
Worth a read for a better understanding of this world.
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