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.

Little novels of Sicily; (Penguin modern classics)

Literature & Fiction

Giovanni Verga

Literary

Penguin Books, Ltd.

La Lupa: The She-Wolf
The villagers have given Giuseppina the nickname "the She-wolf" "because she never had enough-of anything. The women made the sign of the Cross when they saw her pass," and even the parish priest lost his soul for her. Maricchia, her daughter, bemoans her own fate: No one would want the daughter of such a woman as his wife, even though her dowry and landholdings are the match of any young woman in the town. When Nanni, a young man of the village, returns from his compulsory military service, the She-wolf falls desperately in love with him.
Inspiration for Shakira's 2009 album She-Wolf.

The She-Wolf and Other Stories

Short Stories & Anthologies

University of California Press

House by the Medlar Tree

Contemporary

Dedalus, Ltd

An excerpt of a review from The Critic: An Illustrated Monthly Review of Literature, Art and Life, Volume 20 [1892]: Italy's Greatest Living Novelist... Those persons in England who have never heard, in any other way, of Italy's greatest contemporary novelist, have become familiar with his name of late, thanks to the success achieved by Mascagni's opera, 'Cavalleria Rusticana,' which owes no little of its strength and originality to its libretto, derived from a novelette of Verga, bearing this title. Giovanni Verga is unquestionably the most original and powerful of living Italian novelists. He is to their prose what Giosuè Carducci is to their poetry, a new departure, a path-finder. Verga has been the first in his country to accept the naturalist movement in dealing with novels, and to break with the romantic traditions impressed on modern Italian literature by Manzoni with his famous novel, 'I Promessi Sposi.' It is happily difficult to classify Verga, happily we say advisedly, because in his variety lies his strength and his freshness. He is certainly no idealist, no pattern has been shown him on the Mount, or if there has, he uses it to verify deviations only. Among his people one finds no angels and no heroes, though more than one of them is capable of heroism in a quiet way, like Mena in the 'Malavoglia,' a character which is worthy to be put beside that of Jeanie Deans. Mena is as intensely Italian as Jeanie is intensely Scotch. In all his works, Verga is true to nature, whether in the surroundings of his characters or in the characters themselves; whether it be nature uncultivated, undisciplined, uncontrolled, or nature sophisticated, corrupt and refined; he is equally true to the nature of the broad malaria-stricken plains of Sicily, and to that of the gilded, perfumed saloons of Milan and Palermo, but he is at his best when treating of nature untouched by education. He is a wonderfully keen observer, and with sharp, short, incisive touches reproduces his observations and impressions. In his pages we hear the sighing of the waves on the sea-shore, the chirp of nesting birds at sunset, the piteous cries of half-starved peanut children, the bells of distant churches answering each other at Christmas time; he gives the chatter of the women at the fountain, the slow, sententious talk of the old men at the church-steps, the whispered consultations of thieves and smugglers, the murmured converse of lovers, the stifled cries and tears of illicit passion. He is as true as Zola, but, unlike Zola, he never dwells on the lowest forms of degradation.

House By The Medlar-tree

CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform

Little Novels of Sicily - “Novelle Rusticane” - Giovanni Verga - translated by D. H. Lawrence           Little Novels of Sicily - Novelle Rusticane - Giovanni Verga. Translated by D. H. Lawrence. Giovanni Carmelo Verga (2 September 1840 - 27 January 1922) was an Italian realist (Verismo) writer, best known for his depictions of life in his native Sicily, and especially for the short story (and later play) Cavalleria Rusticana and the novel I Malavoglia (The House by the Medlar Tree). The first son of Giovanni Battista Catalano Verga and Caterina Di Mauro, Verga was born into a prosperous family of Catania in Sicily. Giovanni Verga, the Sicilian novelist and playwright, is surely the greatest writer of Italian fiction, after Manzoni.       Verga was born in Catania, Sicily, in 1840, and died in the same city, at the age of eighty-two, in January, 1922. As a young man he left Sicily to work at literature and mingle with society in Florence and Milan, and these two cities, especially the latter, claim a large share of his mature years. He came back, however, to his beloved Sicily, to Catania, the seaport under Etna, to be once more Sicilian of the Sicilians and spend his long declining years in his own place.

Little Novels Of Sicily

SHORT SICILIAN NOVELS (Dedalus European Classics)

Arts & Photography

Dedalus Limited

Sizilianische Dorfgeschichten / Cavalleria rusticana. (German Edition)

dtv.

Die Malavoglia

Insel, Frankfurt

Tutte Le Novelle (Language: Italian) (French Edition)

Classics

A. Mondadori

Mastro don Gesualdo

Genre Fiction

GIUNTI

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Books by Giovanni Verga