A new translation of the stories of Giovanni Verga, the greatest Italian short-story writer since Boccaccio. Verga's rich naturalism and orginality of style have posed formidable problems for those translators who have dared attempt him. Born into a well-to-do Sicilian family, in the 1870s and 1880s Verga became an active observer and habitue of Milanese salon society, but eventually found in the everyday lives of Sicilian peasants the inspiration for his finest narratives. Love, adultery and honour are recurring themes in stories set against the scorched landscapes of the slopes of Mount Etna and the Plain of Catania.
