19th-century
A01=Giovanni Verga
Author_Giovanni Verga
Category=FBC
Category=FYB
Category=FYT
eq_anthologies-novellas-short-stories
eq_bestseller
eq_classics
eq_fiction
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
forthcoming
irony
Italy
landscape
peasants
political fiction
poverty
realism
Risorgimento
short stories
Sicily
social commentary
Product details
- ISBN 9781782697077
- Dimensions: 129 x 198mm
- Publication Date: 13 Aug 2026
- Publisher: Pushkin Press
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
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Drawn from the Sicily of Giovanni Verga's childhood - at the time, the poorest place in Europe - the stories in Little Novels of Sicily capture life's inimitably ironic blend of beauty and sorrow. A loudly lamenting widower enters negotiations for a new wife even before the grave is filled; a donkey driver finds the patronage of the king a mixed blessing; and successful revolutionaries discover that liberty is of short duration.
Full of twists in perspective and lyrically described landscapes, Verga's stories record the class struggles of Risorgimento Italy, the relationship between men and the land, and the cynical yet reassuring intimacy of life in a rural community. In deceptively simple, powerfully concentrated prose, Verga shifts between affection and dry detachment, but never turns his gaze away from life as it is really lived.
Giovanni Verga was born in Catania, Sicily, in 1840, and died in the same city in 1922. As a young man he left Sicily to work at literature and mingle with society in Florence and Milan, but eventually came back to spend his long declining years in his own place. He wrote in many genres and produced several classics of Italian literature, including the novel The House of the Medlar Tree. His short stories about Sicily are widely agreed to be his masterpieces.
