The Penguin Book of Italian Short Stories
  • Published: 7 March 2019
  • ISBN: 9780141985626
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 304

The Penguin Book of Italian Short Stories

Formats & editions
Paperback
19 May 2020
EBook
7 Mar 2019
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A landmark collection of stories selected and introduced by award-winning author Jhumpa Lahiri

When Jhumpa Lahiri decided to read exclusively in Italian, a language she had studied for many years, her life as a reader - and writer - took a surprising turn. Complete immersion in this rich literary heritage brought fresh insight and unexpected freedom.

This collection brings together forty writers that have shaped her love of the Italian language and profound appreciation for its literature. More than half of the stories featured in this volume have been translated into English for the first time and the wide ranging selection includes well known authors such as Italo Calvino, Elsa Morante and Luigi Pirandello, alongside many captivating rediscoveries.

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. Together they reflect over a hundred years of Italy's vibrant and diverse short story tradition, their powerful voices resonating through regional landscapes, private passions and the dramatic political events of the twentieth century.
  • Published: 7 March 2019
  • ISBN: 9780141985626
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 304
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Praise for The Penguin Book of Italian Short Stories

A fantastically rich - and beautiful - anthology that's teaching me a lot

Chris Power

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

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

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

The best anthology of its kind I've read

John Self, Observer