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Luigi Pirandello

Stories for the Years (The Margellos World Republic of Letters) (World Republic of Letters (Yale)) Hardcover – 8 Sept. 2020

by Luigi Pirandello (Author), Virginia Jewiss (Author)

3 ratings

A masterful collection by a literary giant of the past century, rendered by one of our most esteemed Italian translators

Regarded as one of Europe’s great modernists, Pirandello was also a master storyteller, a fine observer of the drama of daily life with a remarkable sense of the crushing burdens of class, gender, and social conventions. Set in the author’s birthplace of Sicily, where the arid terrain and isolated villages map the fragile interior world of his characters, and in Rome, where modern life threatens centuries-old traditions, these original stories are sun baked with the deep lore of Italian folktales. In “The Jar,” a broken earthenware pot pits its owner, a quarrelsome landholder, against a clever inventor of a mysterious glue. “The Dearly Departed” tells the story of a young widow and her new husband on their honeymoon, haunted at every turn by the sly visage of the deceased. The scorned lover, the despondent widow, the intransigent bureaucrat, the wretched peasant―Pirandello’s characters expose the human condition in all its fatalism, injustice, and raw beauty. For lovers of Calvino and Pasolini, these picturesque stories preserve a memory of an Italy long gone, but one whose recurring concerns still speak to us today.

Print length

352 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Yale University Press
Publication date

8 Sept. 2020
Dimensions

12.7 x 2.7 x 19.69 cm
ISBN-10

0300150962
ISBN-13

978-0300150964
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Product details

Publisher : Yale University Press (8 Sept. 2020)
Language : English
Hardcover : 352 pages
ISBN-10 : 0300150962
ISBN-13 : 978-0300150964
Dimensions : 12.7 x 2.7 x 19.69 cm

Best Sellers Rank: 98,229 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- 3,121 in Short Stories (Books)
- 10,819 in Literary Fiction (Books)
- 14,818 in Contemporary Fiction (Books)

Customer reviews:
3 ratings

Product description

Review

"Virginia Jewiss opens up many of Pirandello's rich, humorous, tragic, always engaging and surprising worlds in these trenchant and entertaining stories."--Jonathan Galassi

"Pirandello is a master of the beguiling story that packs a frightening punch."--Tim Parks, author of Italian Ways: On and Off the Rails from Milan to Palermo

"The visionary dramatist Luigi Pirandello was also a masterful spinner of short stories that are steeped in the salt sea, bitter herbs, and ancient passions of his native Sicily. Virginia Jewiss captures the biting edge of Pirandello's irony with perfect pitch."--Ingrid Rowland, University of Notre Dame

"The greatest short fiction begins with narrative and moves effortlessly into archetype, achieving in a small compass an epiphany about what is quintessentially human. Jewiss has rendered Pirandello's epiphanies faithfully and triumphantly."--Karl Kirchwey, Boston University

About the Author

Luigi Pirandello (1867–1936) is one of Italy’s most significant literary figures of the last century. Virginia Jewiss, a translator of Italian literature and cinema, lives in Rome and in Washington, DC.

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A master storyteller

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 30 December 2020

Not being much of a short story reader anyway, and having always thought of Pirandello as a modernist and therefore “difficult” I was pleasantly surprised by this wonderful collection of stories, from someone who really is a master storyteller. With empathy and insight he explores the lives of “ordinary” people coping with the trials and tribulations of everyday life. Often bleak, even tragic, sometimes absurd, but always beautifully crafted, these stories are a wonderful introduction to Pirandello’s writing and make me want to read more.

Helpful

Roman Clodia

Bleak modernist stories

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 5 August 2020

I found this quite a bleak collection of stories though there are moments of respite such as the radiant red geranium of the final tale. There are situations of the Absurd that are close to despair, and a sense of an uncaring universe as a backdrop to the human comedy (in the Dantean sense). Don't expect conclusions or an ordered moral framework - these are more modernist but also hark back to a fabular tradition (such as the story about the cat and the goldfinch). A thoughtful introduction and translation does these stories justice.