This selection was originally published in 1965, a date which gives it a good overview of the intensely creative period of Italian literature (and cinema) that ran from the late fascist era up to the early 1960s — such an important epoch that only now is another generation of younger writers emerging (who are represented in the Serpent’s Tail anthology reviewed above). The writers included here; Italo Calvino, Carlo Cassola, Carlo Emilio Gadda, Natalia Ginzburg, Alberto Moravia, Cesare Pavese, Vasco Pratolini and Mario Soldati — are all (apart from Soldati, a very good minor writer) still considered as important; Calvino, for one, has influenced writers around the world with his stylistic innovations.


The book is published in ‘parallel text’, with each story appearing in English opposite the Italian original. It’s a pleasant way for the student of Italian to develop the ability to read Italian prose and increase vocabulary, but the quality of the stories is so high that it’s worth finding a copy just to read in English. The most effective story is perhaps Natalia Ginzburg’s The Mother, an alternative vision of motherhood and family life written circa 1957.

‘She told them they must turn the other way while she undressed, they heard the quick rustle of her clothes, and shadows danced on the walls; she slipped into bed beside them, her thin body in its cold silk nightdress, and they moved away from her because she always complained that they came too close and kicked while they slept; sometimes she put out the light so that they should go to sleep and smoked in silence in the darkness.’ pp109-110 The Mother Natalia Ginzburg