Grazia Deledda

Martha King

The rugged landscape of Baronia on Sardinia sets the scene for this novel of crime, guilt and retribution. This novel presents the story of the Pintor sisters - from a family of noble landowners now in decline - their nephew Giacinto, and their servant Efix, who is trying to make up for a mysterious sin committed many years before. Around, below, and inside them the raging Mediterranean storms, the jagged mountains, the murmuring forests, and the gushing springs form a Greek chorus of witness to the tragic drama of this unforgiving land. Deledda tells her story with her characteristic love of the natural landscape and fascination with the folk culture of the island, with details about the famous religious festivals held in mountain encampments and the lore of the "dark beings who populate the Sardinian night, the fairies who live in rocks and caves, and the sprites with seven red caps who bother sleep." Introduction by the Sardinian ethnographer, Dolores Turchi.

Reeds in the Wind

"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.

A Collection of Short Fiction

New Italian Women

Gianna Manzini

"The first English translation of "Ritratto in piedi," winner of the Premio Campiello 1971, this semi-autobiographical novel portrays the artistic, intellectual and emotional relationship between Gianna Manzini and her father, Giuseppe, a noted Italian anarchist, publisher and writer who died in exile in 1925"--Provided by publisher.

Full-length Portrait

Since the publication of Martha King's New Italian Women: A Collection of Short Fiction by Italica Press in 1989, a whole new generation of women writers, born and educated after World War II, has grown up on the Italian literary scene. They lived through the revolution of the late 1960s and have enjoyed economic and social advantages unimaginable by previous generations. The militant 1960s and '70s also broke down many traditional barriers that had kept women at home and restricted their job possibilities. Broader experiences provided women writers of the post-war generation with new material for creative expression and new attitudes to explore. An entirely new range of subjects displaces the autobiographical and memory writing of earlier years. This younger generation deals more openly with sexual themes and shows a willingness to take on heretofore unmentionable topics. They describe abuse, mental illness, the body and erotic relationships are described with a new frankness. At the same time, they treat the realities of modernity - apartment living, the television, pop music and the internet, the Americanization of the culture and the language - as the tangible background of their fictions, often with cutting satire or subversive wit. The wider horizons of this post-war generation, and greater artistic freedom, have given them new subjects to explore. These writers have taken their rightful place in the mainstream of current fiction, often at a surprisingly young age, as they imaginatively explore their expanding world with an unapologetic openness and with the unflinching courage to reveal contemporary reality in a variety of voices. Their literary precursors would be proud. The authors include: Silvia Ballestra, Melania G. Mazzucco, Camilla Baresani, Marta Morazzoni, Rosanna Campo, Laura Pariani, Paola Capriolo, Romana Petri, Antonella Cilento, Sandra Petrignani, Emilia Cirillo, Elisabetta Rasy, Carmen Covito, Monica Sarsini, Maria Rosa Cutrufelli, Clara Sereni, Elena Ferrante, Susanna Tamaro, Margherita Giacobino, Valeria Vigano, Margaret Mazzantini, Simona Vinci. The translators include: Maryanne De Julio, Carol Lazzaro-Weis, Carmine G. Di Biase, Barbara Nucci, Adria Frizzi, Minna Proctor, Ann Gagliardi, Martha Witt, Angela M. Jeannet, Mary Ann Frese Witt, Martha King, Sharon Wood."

A Collection of Short Fiction by Postwar Italian Women

After the War

This is a timely and extensive biography of a writer who, in the early twentieth century, achieved such status in the literary world that publishers in Italy vied for her novels, and editors felt honoured to publish her short stories and 'sketches'. Now, almost seventy years after her death, her novels continue to be reprinted and translated, and critical appreciation of her work continues to grow. Her works still live and have the power to move her readers.

Martha King

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