Saddened by the subjugation of Italy under Napoleon, disillusioned with life and racked with loneliness and ennui, university student Jacopo Ortis finds comfort only in the company of his friends and in his love for Teresa. But when his studies call him back to Padua and he is separated from her, Jacopo’s torments become unbearable, and he feels that there is only one way out of his misery – a symbolic gesture against fate, God and all the tyrants of this world.

Said to be based on the tragic real-life story of the Italian student Girolamo Ortis, and suffused with the author’s own experiences, Last Letters of Jacopo Ortis is a masterly prose work by one of Italy’s most celebrated poets, and perhaps the greatest Italian novel of the Romantic period.