Great Italian Stories: 10 Parallel Texts

A spellbinding selection of short stories in the original Italian alongside their English translations

This new dual-language edition of ten stories selected from The Penguin Book of Italian Short Stories celebrates some of the very best twentieth-century literature from Italy. Each story appears in the original Italian alongside an expert English translation, providing unique cultural insight and literary inspiration for language learners. Ranging from a spellbinding tale of the supernatural to a powerful portrait of post-war Italy, this revelatory collection includes works from beloved authors, Italo Calvino, Fausta Cialente, Alba de Céspedes, Grazia Deledda, Natalia Ginzburg, Elsa Morante, Lalla Romano, Umberto Saba, Alberto Savinio, and Elio Vittorini.

About the Author

Jhumpa Lahiri (External Editor)
Jhumpa Lahiri is an award-winning author and translator. She received the Pulitzer Prize in 2000 for Interpreter of Maladies, her debut story collection and was awarded a National Humanities Medal in 2015. Her other works of fiction in English include The Lowland, which was a finalist for the Man Booker prize.

Lahiri has also written five books directly in Italian, including In altre parole (translated in English as In Other Words), the novel Dove mi trovo (translated as Whereabouts) and Racconti Romani, published in English as Roman Stories. Her translation of Domenico Starnone's Trick was a Finalist for the National Book Award and her essay collection Translating Myself and Others was a finalist for the 2023 PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award. She divides her time between Rome and New York, where she is the Millicent C. McIntosh Professor of English and Director of the Creative Writing Program at Barnard College.