The first story here, Land of Exile, is about the impotence of the exile, written not long after Pavese’s own period of juridical exile for writing articles against the fascist government. The short piece Wedding Trip, in which a man crushes his wife’s spirit with meanness, is reminiscent of George Orwell’s preoccupation with the brutalising psychological effects of poverty and the drying-up of emotional generosity — a subject re-examined in the story Suicides.


Friends captures the feel of small-town life in describing a band of youths growing up together, a kind of worn-in common experience of mutual boredom mixed with mutual sympathy. One of the band enters into a claustrophobic marriage with a local girl while another goes off to ‘adventures’ in Ethiopia (which Italy invaded in the 1930s) and returns to drink up his pay. Friends has the concreteness that characterises most of Pavese’s work, a quality not so common in writing from Latin countries, which tend towards more lyrical and rhetorical literary traditions.


Gaol Birds presents Concia, a wonderfully betraying woman who is either an enormous stereotype or a magnificent archetype. In The Cornfield Pavese drums up a novel’s-worth of atmosphere as he rolls out two of his big themes: the rejection of peasant life by the young and the falsity of lovers. The way he works these two themes is a great achievement, as he himself wrote, ‘The style of the twentieth century expresses but does not explain...It is a never-ending revelation of inner life’.

‘In the dead of night she was awakened by footsteps outside the door and the sound of heavy breathing. A dog, perhaps? Or a drunk? Terror and uncertainty kept her trembling on the sofa, her eyes starting open as she heard a coming and going, a creaking. Could it be the wind? Her heart felt numb with horror and shame at having to sleep in a low kitchen like a peasant girl, behind a door by the road, at the mercy of every passer-by....She was terrified in case the door was not properly shut; even worse was her dread of anyone seeing the sink in the corner with its constant dripping. She screwed up her eyes and tried to sleep. The Cornfield p208