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The Penguin Book of Italian Short Stories edited by Jhumpa Lahiri

by
November 2019, no. 416

The Penguin Book of Italian Short Stories edited by Jhumpa Lahiri

Penguin Classics, $49.99 hb, 515 pp, 9780241299838

The Penguin Book of Italian Short Stories edited by Jhumpa Lahiri

by
November 2019, no. 416

In 1942, Elio Vittorini managed to circumvent the Fascist censors and publish Americana, a landmark anthology of thirty-three American authors. The aim of this massive project – over a thousand pages with translations into Italian carried out by ten significant literary figures of the time, including Alberto Moravia, Cesare Pavese, and Nobel Laureate poet Eugenio Montale – was to introduce iconic American voices to Italian readers. In assembling her substantial collection of forty Italian short stories, Jhumpa Lahiri set herself the same objective but in reverse: to introduce Italian authors to American readers. Lahiri declares Vittorini was her ‘guiding light’, not only for the general design of the work but also ‘in writing the brief author biographies – intended as partial sketches and not definitive renderings – that preface each story’.

Rita Wilson reviews 'The Penguin Book of Italian Short Stories' edited by Jhumpa Lahiri

The Penguin Book of Italian Short Stories

edited by Jhumpa Lahiri

Penguin Classics, $49.99 hb, 515 pp, 9780241299838

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