Published in 1880, one year before Verga's influential novel The Malavoglias, Life in the Country first marked his stylistic shift towards the verismo school of Italian realism. The collection's centrepiece, 'Rustic Honour' ('Cavalleria rusticana') – which was famously adapted into a play by the author before becoming an opera by Mascagni – tells the tale of Turiddu, a poor young man who returns from military service and finds himself embroiled in adultery and a feud with a rival.Also including the well-known stories 'She-Wolf' and 'Foxfur', Life in the Country captures, in an objective, non-judgemental prose, the difficult conditions and personal struggles of the peasant class in his native Sicily at the turn of the twentieth century.

Lawrence's translations of Verga's Sicilian short stories are classics in their genre, perfectly capturing their cunning fusion of artlessness, austere detachment and skilfully engineered spontaneity as well as retaining something of that lofty style for which Verga's Italian contemporaries so admired him. For seekers after the truth at the heart of Sicily's enigma, this is required reading.' The Observer 'The best of these stories (Liberty, The Gentry) have the directness, even a brutality, to match Cormac McCarthy, and Lawrence's translation is exemplary.' Shaun Whiteside in The Times 'In these stories the whole of Sicily of the eighteen-sixties lives before us - poor gentry, priests, rich landowners, farmers, peasants, animals, seasons and scenery; and whether his subjects be the brutal bloodshed of an abortive revolution or the simple human comedy that can even attend deep mourning, Verga never loses his complete artistic mastery of his material. He throws the whole of his...

An epic struggle against the elements and poverty in 19th c Sicily.

A young girl falls in love but is forced return to the covent and become a nun. This volume contains the long novella Sparrow, the short stories of Cavalleria Rusticana and five stories never previously translated into English: Temptation, The Schoolmaster, The Devil's Hand, The Gold Key and Comrades. A great read for anyone interested in Sicily and Southern Italy. Verga is the master of the short-story form.

This outstanding selection of 12 short stories from the Italian verismo (realist) school features tales from the author's Vita dei campi (Rural Life) and Novelle rusticane (Rustic Stories). Selections include the celebrated "Cavalleria Rusticana" (Rustic Chivalry), "Nedda," "L'amante di Gramigna" (Gramigna's Mistress), "Reverie," "Jeli the Herdsman," "Nasty Redhead," and 6 others.