With echoes of Boccaccio and Cervantes, Poe and Kafka, Arturo Loria tells stories of corpse-bearers and beggars, of jealous goats, aging coquettes, and traveling performers. Near-fables, these stories are populated with figures - called simply "the waiter," "the knife-grinder," "the blind man," and "the beauty" - who move in a world seemingly unmarked by particular times and spaces. But despite Loria's frequent refusals of name and place and date, these characters are firmly located in the subtle, complex states of feeling that he portrays so masterfully. Through careful studies of shame and self-loathing, exoticism and scapegoating, isolation and corruption, Loria also pointedly addresses the individual and collective pathologies of fascist-era Italy. With David Tabbat's vivid and elegant translation of these stories, Loria's fiction, long-acclaimed in Italy, is available for the first time in English.

Translated by: David Tabbat