Literary Pilgrims Flock To Imaginary Garden

Giorgio Bassani, author of The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, in 1974.
PHOTO BY MARIO DE BIASI/MONDADORI PORTFOLIO VIA GETTY IMAGES

The Garden of the Finzi-Continis was invented in Giorgio Bassani’s 1962 historical novel of the same name. It was so lovingly described in the book that many devoted readers have made a pilgrimage to the city of Ferrara, in Italy’s northeastern province of Emilia Romagna hoping to visit it only to be told that the garden existed only in Bassani's imagination. Now an Israeli sculptor named Karavan is going to do an installation called The Garden That Doesn't Exist. It will present as "large walls of glass covered in passages from the book in multiple languages, with an opening in it like a garden gate. Railway tracks interrupt it, evoking the deportations to death camps. Around the wall will be green grass, and inside only sand. And against the wall will rest a ladder, like the one used by the novel’s characters."

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