NEW RELEASES
Romance of the Three Kingdoms Vol. 3: From the Grass by Eiji Yoshikawa
The Sacramental Lands by Francesco Jovine
THE EMPIRE IS DIVIDED
Dong Zhuo is dead, but the empire is no closer to peace. The tyrant’s lieutenants have seized the Emperor and turned on each other, the capital lies in ruins, and the warlords who united to overthrow him have scattered to carve out their own domains. In the chaos, three separate stories unfold across the breadth of China.
In the east, the young warrior Sun Ce, barely twenty, burning with ambition, and so brilliant in battle that men call him the Little Conqueror, fights his way across the Yangtze to build the kingdom that will one day become Wu. In the north, Cao Cao methodically absorbs rivals, marries strategically, wages brutal campaigns against Zhang Xiu along the Yu River, and demonstrates the calculating ruthlessness that will make him the most powerful man in China. And on the roads between them, Liu Bei wanders landless, without an army, dependent on the hospitality of men who may betray him at any moment, and surviving only through the loyalty of his brothers and his stubborn refusal to abandon the cause he swore to in the Peach Garden.
This is the volume that includes the famous story where Cao Cao tells his thirsty, exhausted soldiers that plum groves lie just ahead and gives them the courage to march on. But there are no plum groves. There is only a brilliant general who understands that sometimes an imaginary plum is worth more than a real one.
From the Grass is the third of ten volumes in Castalia House’s complete English translation of Yoshikawa Eiji’s Sangokushi. Over the next two weeks, all ten volumes will be released. Now available on Amazon.
Excerpt
One of Yang Feng’s subordinates came to him with a report.
“Xu Huang has brought someone from the enemy camp into his tent. They are speaking privately.”
Yang Feng’s suspicions were immediate.
“Seize them both and bring them before me,” he ordered, and dispatched several dozen cavalry to surround Xu Huang’s tent. But Cao Cao’s concealed forces rose from their positions and drove the riders back, and Man Chong rescued Xu Huang from the encirclement. Together, the two men escaped to Cao Cao’s camp.
Cao Cao, having obtained Xu Huang as he had hoped, said simply, “This is the greatest joy I have known of late.”
Cao Cao loved able men more than he loved women. How lavishly he treated Xu Huang need hardly be described.
Yang Feng and Han Xian attempted a counterattack, but Xu Huang had already gone over to the enemy, and seeing no prospect of victory, they withdrew southward to Nanyang in Henan, where they threw themselves upon the mercy of Yuan Shu.
And so the Emperor’s carriage and Cao Cao’s army arrived at last at the gates of Xuchang.
Here stood the old palace halls and gate towers, and below the walls a proper city with streets and markets already in place. Cao Cao first established the imperial residence, then ordered the construction of ancestral temples and the expansion of government offices, and in this way transformed Xuchang into a capital worthy of the name.
At the same time, thirteen ministers of the old court were enfeoffed as marquises, and Cao Cao himself assumed the title of Grand Marshal, Marquis of Wuping.
Dong Zhao, who had previously come as the Emperor’s envoy and whose qualities Cao Cao had recognized even then, was now elevated at a stroke to the post of Magistrate of Luoyang.
Man Chong, in recognition of his service, was appointed Magistrate of Xuchang.
Xun Yu became Attendant-in-Ordinary and Director of the Secretariat.
Xun You was named Military Advisor.
Guo Jia received the post of Marshal of Ceremonies.
Liu Ye was appointed Assistant to the Minister of Works.
Cui Du became Superintendent of Revenue.
Xiahou Dun, Xiahou Yuan, Cao Ren, Cao Hong, the most trusted of Cao Cao’s trusted men, were all raised to the rank of general. Yue Jin, Li Dian, and Xu Huang, proven warriors all, were appointed colonels. Xu Chu and Dian Wei were named commandants.
With such an assembly of talent, Cao Cao’s authority made itself felt to the farthest horizons.
Whenever he came or went, three hundred armored elite troops flowed around him, their bows and halberds glittering. By contrast, the old ministers of the court were left with nothing but their titles. Grand Minister, Elder Statesman; the words still hung in the air, but the shadows behind them grew thinner by the day.
These men had been brought entirely to heel by Cao Cao’s ascendancy. It had become the established custom that every matter of governance was first reported to Cao Cao, and only afterward memorialized to the Son of Heaven.
“One tyrant is removed, and another rises in his place. Surely the fortunes of the House of Han are a sun already setting in the west.”
Those who lamented did not lament aloud. They wept only behind the dull veil of powerless eyes, standing motionless beside the Emperor like wooden statues.
Military advisors, strategists, and a brilliant company of staff officers were drinking with fierce enthusiasm.
At the center of them sat Cao Cao. His face radiated an ambition vast as a rainbow, and he was holding forth grandly on the affairs of the realm when the conversation happened to turn to Liu Bei.
“That man has somehow installed himself as the master of Xuzhou, and from what I hear, he has taken Lü Bu in at Xiaopei and is supporting him there. The combination of Lü Bu’s valor and Liu Bei’s statesmanship is a matter of some concern for the future. If those two were ever to unite in purpose and direct their combined strength against us, the situation would become troublesome even now. Has anyone a stratagem to prevent this before it takes shape?”
When Cao Cao had spoken, Xu Chu answered at once.
“Nothing could be simpler. Give me fifty thousand picked troops, and I will bring back Lü Bu’s head and Liu Bei’s head both, hanging from either side of my saddle.”
Someone laughed.
“Ha ha ha ha ha! They are not wine jars, you know.”
It was Xun Yu. He was raising his cup to the lips that had just laughed, regarding Xu Chu from the narrow corners of a strategist’s eyes.
AN AWARD-WINNING NOVEL OF EARLY 20TH CENTURY ITALY
In the remote hill country of Molise, the sacramental lands lie cursed and fallow. Once the property of the Church, then seized by the new Italian state and sold to the Cannavale family, the fields have gone unworked for generations — haunted, the peasants say, by divine punishment. Lightning strikes the chapel. Horses bolt and drag their riders over the stones. No one will touch the soil. Into this world of ancient superstition and feudal decay comes Luca Marano, a seminary dropout and son of illiterate peasants, who dares to believe that the land belongs to the people who are willing to work it.
Luca’s struggle draws him into an uneasy alliance with Laura, the unhappy wife of the landowner Enrico Cannavale, a man of charm and casual cruelty whose grip on his estate, his household, and his own sanity is slowly loosening. As Laura commits her fortune and her reputation to restoring the sacramental lands, and as Luca gathers the desperate peasants of Morutri to occupy them, the two are drawn together across a gulf of class, education, and convention that neither can fully bridge.
Francesco Jovine’s posthumous masterpiece, winner of the Premio Viareggio in 1950, is one of the great Italian novels of the twentieth century and one that has never before appeared in English. At once a love story, a political tragedy, and a portrait of a world where the land itself is a character, The Sacramental Lands stands alongside Carlo Levi’s Christ Stopped at Eboli and Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s The Leopard as an essential work of Italian literature. An original Castalia House translation. Now available on Amazon.
Excerpt
Morutri lay at the far edge of the Sacramento estate. At its highest point, toward Calena, the estate had a hillock with the ruined chapel from which it took its name. Beside the chapel stood the remains of a small Capuchin hermitage. The chapel had been in use until 1867, the year the estate, which belonged in large part to the episcopal see of Calena and the barony of Morutri, was confiscated and bought at auction by the Cannavale family. In those years, one May night, a storm wrapped Morutri and Calena in a phosphorescent light, and the Sacramento chapel was split apart by lightning. Some shepherds who had tried to round up their sheep and drive them back to the pens had seen clearly, among the clouds, the Blessed Sacrament appear — a luminous, radiant disk from which the lightning bolts flew down upon the chapel. Twenty sheep were burned to cinders; one of the shepherds found himself, waking from a long sleep, naked as a worm. He had fled toward Morutri, chased by dozens of devils that came pouring out of the chapel ruins, hopping and hissing in the dark.
A month later, toward the end of June, at night and without warning, a small light appeared from the north and began to dance among the stubble and the brush. From the four corners of the land flames leapt up, the fire reached a grove near Macchia Loreto, and around the chapel a blaze broke out. The alarm bells were rung at Morutri, but no one stirred to put out the fire. The spring at Gerino and the streams south of the chapel were found, days later, dry as the bed of an African river.
“But is all this true?” Laura asked.
“I don’t know,” Enrico answered. “All I know, from the court papers, is that in ’67 the administration of the episcopal see brought a suit through a front man to challenge the expropriation. A lawsuit that lasted forty years.”
“And who won?”
“Good lord, it was a hopeless case. My father won it. But the peasants of Morutri and Pietrafolca, from that night on, refused to work the land.”
Laura had sat down on a pile of stones, halfway up the slope, and looked out over the boundless expanse falling away toward the village that huddled, like a growth, at the edge of the estate. The horses, a few steps away, reins loose on their necks, cropped the grass that pushed up between the stones.
“Of course,” said Enrico. “I don’t know if it’s because the springs dried up, but one side of the village is being eaten by a landslide. In winter the cemetery carries its dead down toward the Calandro.”
Laura, after a moment’s silence, asked:
“How many hectares?”
“Must be three thousand.”
Enrico stood and traced the boundaries of the estate with a broad sweep of his arm.
“Down there, where the farmhouses are — that’s Cannavale land that isn’t part of the estate. It’s the only land that’s properly farmed.”
Laura followed his directions absently. Suddenly, as though reaching the end of some inward reasoning, she said:
“Do you know don Giacomo Fontana?”
“Who’s that?” said Enrico, turning.
“A priest.”
“I don’t know him. I don’t want anything to do with priests.”
“You’ll run into him. You would have met him already if you hadn’t been away a whole month.” She paused, then added, slowly, with sadness: “Twenty-nine days.”
Enrico was taken aback by her tone. His eyes filled with tender wonder. He drew close to Laura and said:
“You counted them?”
“I counted them,” Laura answered, looking him full in the face with those eyes of hers, full of allure and youthful innocence.
Enrico moved closer, hesitant, as though he wanted to give form to the surge of sudden tenderness. But Laura stood up. Her face turned serious. She said: “Shall we go to Morutri? It’ll be late if we don’t leave now.”
She took her horse by the reins, put her foot in the stirrup, and swung into the saddle as though flying. Enrico’s horse, on the other hand, made a strange, half-wheeling move that shook the stirrup from his foot three or four times. Enrico lost his temper and struck the animal on the head with the crop handle, and the horse began to rear, fighting the vicious jerks of the bit.
Laura watched without blinking. She said slowly:
“Shall I get down and help you?”
But Enrico wasn’t listening. He managed to calm himself for a moment and lead the animal forward gently by the reins. He brought it alongside a pile of stones and tried to swing onto its flank from the higher ground. But the horse seemed to have guessed the trick, and when Enrico got his foot in the stirrup, it sidled away, nearly throwing him. Laura dismounted. She went to Enrico’s horse, took it gently by the bit, stroked its head two or three times, and then pushed it back, murmuring soft words the way one does with a child. The horse moved obediently. When it was in the right position, Laura said:
“Now. Go ahead.”
Enrico mounted. The moment he had the animal between his legs he drove his spurs cruelly into its flanks. His face was tight and his eyes burned.
“The Devil’s Goat,” Laura murmured to herself, watching him gallop over the rough ground.
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