Overview

Jhumpa Lahiri's rich and varied selection of the greatest Italian writing of the twentieth century, now a Penguin Classics paperback This landmark collection brings together forty writers that reflect over a hundred years of Italy's vibrant and diverse short story tradition, from the birth of the modern nation to the end of the twentieth century. Poets, journalists, visual artists, musicians, editors, critics, teachers, scientists, politicians, translators- the writers that inhabit these pages represent a dynamic cross section of Italian society, their powerful voices resonating through regional landscapes, private passions and dramatic political events. This wide-ranging selection curated by Jhumpa Lahiri includes well-known authors such as Italo Calvino, Elsa Morante and Luigi Pirandello alongside many captivating new discoveries. More than a third of the stories featured in this volume have been translated into English for the first time, several of them by Lahiri herself.

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Reviews

An enticing collection . . . a remarkable sample of the literary form . . . the tales are by turns startling, moving, intriguing and provocative; they bring melancholy, humour and a dose of the uncanny. * TLS * Taken one by one, each story in this volume is a jewel. Taken all together, the book is a remarkable introduction to Italian literature and a great gift to the English-speaking reader. Remarkable stories from a wide range of writers describe the mundane and the fantastic, the everyday and the sublime. * Kirkus * Jhumpa Lahiri has pulled off something quite striking here: a literary anthology that sparkles with invention and variety, makes a remarkably convincing case for the vitality of the modern Italian short story and also beguiles, thanks to her sharp-eyed work as editor, compiler and part-translator. -- Robert S C Gordon * Literary Review * A feast . . . her choice of 40 authors embraces familiar greats and sows them with fascinating additions . . . they remind us of the short story's playfulness, it's ability to move us with unexpected sharpness while it experiments with voices, styles and boundaries -- Julian Evans * Telegraph * A fantastically rich - and beautiful - anthology that's teaching me a lot -- Chris Power

A fantastically rich - and beautiful - anthology that's teaching me a lot -- Chris Power The best anthology of its kind I've read -- John Self * Observer * A feast . . . her choice of 40 authors embraces familiar greats and sows them with fascinating additions . . . they remind us of the short story's playfulness, it's ability to move us with unexpected sharpness while it experiments with voices, styles and boundaries * Telegraph * Jhumpa Lahiri has pulled off something quite striking here: a literary anthology that sparkles with invention and variety, makes a remarkably convincing case for the vitality of the modern Italian short story and also beguiles, thanks to her sharp-eyed work as editor, compiler and part-translator. * Literary Review * Taken one by one, each story in this volume is a jewel. Taken all together, the book is a remarkable introduction to Italian literature and a great gift to the English-speaking reader. Remarkable stories from a wide range of writers describe the mundane and the fantastic, the everyday and the sublime. * Kirkus * An enticing collection . . . a remarkable sample of the literary form . . . the tales are by turns startling, moving, intriguing and provocative; they bring melancholy, humour and a dose of the uncanny. -- Vilma de Gasperin * TLS *

Author Information

Jhumpa Lahiri is an award-winning author and translator. She received the Pulitzer Prize in 2000 for Interpreter of Maladies, her debut story collection and was awarded a National Humanities Medal in 2015. Her other works of fiction in English include The Lowland, which was a finalist for the Man Booker prize. Lahiri has also written three books directly in Italian, including In altre parole (translated in English as In Other Words) and the novel Dove mi trovo. Her translation of Domenico Starnone's Trick was a Finalist for the National Book Award. She divides her time between Rome and Princeton University, where she is a professor of Creative Writing and Literary Translation

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