Experimental feature: Order Little Novels of Sicily from the UK, Canada, Germany or France by clicking an appropriate flag below.

               

Some items available at Amazon.com are not available in all countries.

Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 853.8
EAN: 9781883642549
ISBN: 188364254X
Label: Zoland Books
Manufacturer: Zoland Books
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 160
Publication Date: 2000-02-01
Publisher: Zoland Books
Product Release Date: 2000-02-01
Studio: Zoland Books

FIRST PUBLISHED in a single volume in 1883, the stories collected in Little Novels of Sicily are drawn from the Sicily of Giovanni Verga's childhood, reported at the time to be the poorest place in Europe. Verga's style is swift, sure, and implacable; he plunges into his stories almost in midbreath, and tells them with a stark economy of words. There's something dark and tightly coiled at the heart of each story, an ironic, bitter resolution that is belied by the deceptive simplicity of Verga's prose, and Verga strikes just when the reader's not expecting it.

Translator D. H. Lawrence surely found echoes of his own upbringing in Verga's sketches of Sicilian life: the class struggle between property owners and tenants, the relationship between men and the land, and the unsentimental, sometimes startlingly lyric evocation of the landscape. Just as Lawrence veers between loving and despising the industrial North and its people, so too Verga shifts between affection for and ironic detachment from the superstitious, uneducated, downtrodden working poor of Sicily. If Verga reserves pity for anyone or anything, it is the children and the animals, but he doesn't spare them. In his experience, it is the innocents who suffer first and last and always.

"The Little Novels of Sicily have that sense of the wholeness of life, the spare exuberance, the endless inflections and overtones, and the magnificent and thrilling vitality of major literature."-- The New York Times

"In these stories the whole Sicily of the 1860s lives before us . . . and whether his subject be the brutal bloodshed of an abortive revolution or the simple human comedy that can attend even deep mourning, Verga never loses his complete artistic mastery of his material."-- The Times Literary Supplement

Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Very nice
Review: The perfect book for the avid reader, these are well written and enjoyable. These tales bring a flavor of life to the reader that is rare in writing today.

---

Customer Rating:
Review Summary: The real Sicily
Review: I am doing historical research on Italy and Sicily and this book gives a wonderful view into the lives of ordinary people of the Sicilian countryside. Very frank accounts that are not sugar-coated.

---

Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Great Libretto
Review: This is a wonderful little collection of short stories by the Sicilian author Giovanni Verga. I had never read any Sicilian literature before Verga, and I'm so glad that I started with this book! It has further piqued my interest in Sicilian culture and the Sicilian language. Verga uses his words very carefully in order to paint the pictures of the sorrows, joys, sufferings and moments of rejoicing in eastern Sicily. This is definitely worth the money for anyone who is interesed in Sicilian or Italian literature.

---

Customer Rating:
Review Summary: The whole world is a small town
Review: The whole world is a small town is a sicilian phrase that means no matter where you travel, people will be basically the same. Reading this work by G. Verga gave this saying a whole new meaning for me. I learned that people in Sicily are basically the same today as they were 120 years ago. Giovanni Verga was born and lived in a small town in Sicily called Vizzini. This is the same town that my parents are from. I have spent many summers with my grandmother there. The distant past was always portrayed as somehow better by my grandmother. According to her, our ancestors did not succomb to petty human weaknesses. After enjoying these short stories I realize that my grandmother remembered her youth more with nostalgic fantasy than historic accuracy. This work wonderfully portrays human motivations, strenghts and weaknesses. It was a wonderful revelation to realize that the whole world is a small town, not only in the dimension of space but also in the dimension of time.

---

---