The Gadfly

The Gadfly is a novel by Irish-born British writer Ethel Voynich, published in 1897 (United States, June; Great Britain, September of the same year), set in 1840s Italy under the dominance of Austria, a time of tumultuous revolt and uprisings. The story centres on the life of the protagonist, Arthur Burton. A thread of a tragic relationship between Arthur and his love, Gemma, simultaneously runs through the story. It is a tale of faith, disillusionment, revolution, romance, and heroism.

The book, set during the Italian Risorgimento, is primarily concerned with the culture of revolution and revolutionaries. Arthur, the eponymous Gadfly, embodies the tragic Romantic hero, who comes of age and returns from abandonment to discover his true state in the world and fight against the injustices of the current one. The landscape of Italy, in particular the Alps, is a pervading focus of the book, with its often lush descriptions of scenery conveying the thoughts and moods of characters.

With the central theme of the book being the nature of a true revolutionary, the reflections on religion and rebellion proved to be ideologically suitable and successful. The Gadfly was exceptionally popular in the Soviet Union, the People's Republic of China, and Iran, exerting a large cultural influence. In the Soviet Union, The Gadfly was compulsory reading and the top best seller; indeed, by the time of Voynich's death, The Gadfly is estimated to have sold 2,500,000 copies in the Soviet Union alone. Voynich was unaware of the novel's popularity, and did not receive royalties, until visited by a diplomat in 1955. In China, several publishers translated the book, and one of them (China Youth Press) sold more than 2,050,000 copies. It was banned, however, after the Sino-Soviet split. Irish writer Peadar O'Donnell recalls the novel's popularity among Republican prisoners in Mountjoy Prison during the Irish Civil War.

The Russian composer Mikhail Zhukov turned the book into an opera The Gadfly (Овод, 1928). In 1955, the Soviet director Aleksandr Faintsimmer adapted the novel into a film of the same title (Russian: Ovod) for which Dmitri Shostakovich wrote the score. The Gadfly Suite is an arrangement of selections from Shostakovich's score by the composer Levon Atovmian. A second opera The Gadfly was composed by Soviet composer Antonio Spadavecchia.

On the other hand, in Italy, where the plot takes place during the Italian Unification, the novel is totally neglected: it was translated into Italian as late as in 1956 and was never reprinted: Il figlio del cardinale (literally, The Son of the Cardinal). A new edition, carrying the same title, came out in 2013. (wikipedia.org)