New Italian Women: A Collection of Short Fiction

by Grazia Deledda, Dacia Maraini, Martha King

Overview

"New Italian Women" is a collection of twenty-four stories by seventeen contemporary Italian women celebrates a high level of accomplishment that draws on a tradition of women's literature in Italy, but also marks a new and exciting vitality in Italian fiction. Writing of various experiences and from different regions, these women all create with an ease born of confidence in their art. They exhibit a control, an emotional detachment, that allows the deep irony of their invented world to play below the surface. They have a succinctness, a skill in limiting, that reveals more than layers of detail possibly could. These women share a talent for contriving psychological insights that surprise and touch the reader. AUTHORS INCLUDE Anna Banti, Grazia Deledda, Paola Drigo, Natalia Ginzburg, Geda Jacolutti, Gina Lagorio, Rosetta Loy, Dacia Maraini, Milena Milani, Marina Mizzau, Giuliana Morandini, Elsa Morante, Maria Occhipinti, Anna Maria Ortese, Fabrizia Ramondino, Francesca Sanvitale, and Monica Sarsini.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780934977166
Publisher:	Italica Press
Publication date:	04/18/2009
Series:	Women Writers
Pages:	220
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.50(d)

Editorial Reviews

Despite quixotic editing, this omnibus demonstrates the flexibility and sophistication of contemporary Italian fiction by women. Many writers here are not ``new'' (e.g., 1926 Nobelist Grazia Deledda, Elsa Morante, Natalia Ginzburg); half are represented by fiction that is ``short'' only because it is excerpted, often disadvantageously, from novels; and superfluous footnotes mar these pages. Nevertheless King, a translator (Vasco Pratolini's Family Chronicle ), includes riveting, previously untranslated works. Maria Occhipinti's autobiographical and impassioned ``The Benedictines'' describes a political prisoner's cruel confinement to a Sicilian jail managed by nuns and explicitly advocates reforms; Fabrizia Ramondino portrays a Neapolitan octogenarian matriarch in ``Perfetta's Day''; Milena Milani offers three lightning-swift vignettes; ``The Tree'' showcases Anna Maria Ortese's brilliant prose style. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly