Shorter Notices
THIS is a useful and pleasant little collection of short stories for sixth-form and university students of Italian and for the "general reader." Although a fourteenth-century Italian, Boccaccio, is recognised as one of the great story-tellers of the world, the casual English reader does not realise what an amount of talent in that genre the Italy of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries has pro- duced. This selection is all from the last hundred years and thirteen writers are represented. The tales vary from a touching story by Albertazzi of a peasant soldier on leave because his wife has died, and a gruesome description by Euclid of an attack on an old woman thought to be a witch, to Pirandello's light satire on an English official, and di Giacomo's charming treatment of an old Neapolitan tormented with anxiety about the fate of one of Charle- magne's knights, whose deeds were still, at the end of last century, being recited in the streets. The tone of the stories varies, but the prevailing feeling is of kindliness and simplicity. Italy appears as the land of the peasant ; and the countryside itself is vividly evoked—the heat, the vegetation, the animals—all very comforting after the political Italy of the last twenty years. Discreet bio- graphical and explanatory notes are provided for the reader whose Italian is shaky. None of the stories has been translated or edited in England or America.
Altogether Italy at its most friendly, very well worth the modest price to those who can read the language.
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