My Stupid Intentions -- Bernardo Zannoni - Paperback

A stunning, ambitious novel that follows an unusual protagonist--a beech marten, a kind of weasel, who learns to read and write, discovers God and time, and develops a keen sense of self that makes him seem almost human.

My Stupid Intentions is the autobiography of a beech marten named Archy. Born into poverty, maimed by an accident, he is sold into servitude by his mother and taught to read and write by Solomon--a pawnbroking fox whose knowledge derives from a Bible that fell on his head while he was busy feeding on a hanged man.

Even as Archy's life is transformed by his discovery of the written word and his grappling with the entity called God, he longs for an existence guided by instinct. He longs to be "a real animal." But there is no way of unlearning what he has learned. Caught between his natural urges and his acquired knowledge, he seeks the meaning of his story by writing it.

This debut novel by the young Italian author Bernardo Zannoni is set in a primordial landscape where animals talk and tend their hearths but are never free from the struggle for survival. A picaresque fable, it has drawn comparisons to Pinocchio and Watership Down, The Wind in the Willows and The Stranger.

Author: Bernardo Zannoni
Publisher: New York Review of Books
Published: 06/13/2023
Pages: 224
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.61lbs
Size: 8.40h x 5.70w x 0.50d
ISBN: 9781681377285

Review Citation(s):
Kirkus Reviews 05/01/2023
Publishers Weekly 05/15/2023

About the Author
Bernardo Zannoni is an Italian author from Sarzana. Zannoni began working on his debut novel, My Stupid Intentions, at age 21.

Alex Andriesse was born in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, in 1985. His stories, essays, and poems have appeared in Granta, The Review of Contemporary Fiction, Prodigal, and Literary Imagination. He has translated several works from Italian and French and is an associate editor at New York Review Books.