This collection brings together three international and contemporary plays that each denounce violence against women, alongside interviews with the creators and practitioners who brought them to life. With interviews with writers, directors and producers, who discuss the conception and staging of their plays, their hope is to de-glamourize the staging of violence, to give voice to the survivors of gendered violence, and to create awareness and empathy within the audiences. Little Stitches (London, 2014): four short pieces by Isley Lynn, Raul Quiros Molina , Bahar Brunton and Karis E. Halsall on the issue of Female Genital Mutilation as seen from the point of view of by-standers, health professionals, women who support the practice and, finally, survivors. 'Kubra' (Sydney, 2016) by Dacia Maraini, features a young female protagonist who was subjected to FGM/C as a child, and now brings her case to court. Rape Trial (Rome, 2018), adapted for theatre by Renato Chiocca from the international award-winning documentary of the same title made for Italian state television in 1979, shows how attitudes toward sexual violence, and judicial procedures, tend to turn rape survivors from accusers into accused, in court and in everyday discourse.

Dacia Maraini is today's most prominent Italian writer. She's won, among others, both Campiello and Strega prizes, which are the most prestigious Italian literature awards. Her books have been translated into 22 languages and some of her bestsellers - such as Storia di Piera [Piera's Story], L'eta del malessere [The Age of Malaise], La lunga vita di Marianna Ucria [The Silent Duchess], Voci [Voices], and Memorie di una ladra [Memories of a Thief] - were turned into successful movies. Writing like Breathing is a unique collection comprising some of her most important works, the majority of which have never been translated into English. The series is divided into four major volumes that are meant to give a full picture of Maraini's production from 1962 to the present: I. Autobiography, novels, short stories and poems; II. Plays; III. Articles; IV. Essays, talks and interviews. Writing like Breathing shows how the finest Italian woman writer alive today has embraced and fought for a vast number of issues: women's rights, abuse of women and children, emigration, discrimination, politics, the Holocaust, among many others. Moreover, this collection of Maraini's autobiographies, novels, short stories, and poems, emphasises the author's long relationship with Japan and the United States, countries to which she has devoted several books and articles, both autobiographical and fictional. Some unpublished manuscripts enrich this unique first volume: two short stories ("A Christmas in the Snow Globe" and "Aylan") and three poems ("At Night", "Rome", "Like Sea Bass Underwater"). The other volumes contain unpublished plays ("Diotima and Socrates," "My Name is Antonino Calderone," "Celia Carli, Ornithologist", and "Lia, Who Thought Herself Antigone"), essays, talks, conversations, and interviews given by the author at American universities.

Maraini uses language and stylistics, rather than description, to define her three women protagonists. Lori, the youngest of the three women, uses the impetuous, spontaneous language of youth, late adolescence. Lori's mother, Maria uses the protracted language of a romantic, a learned researcher, and most significantly a translator who chooses words with intention in an attempt to bridge cultures, experiences and, in this case, generations. The grandmother Gesuina, a former stage actress, has a voice that is brutally honest, provocative, escapist. All three voices reflect the essence of the characters: Lori, the reckless teenager who flies off on her moped, her life's speed represented by her diary without punctuation; Maria, the pensive translator whose detailed observations are so concentrated on the word that she does not see the circumstances that are unfolding around her; Gesuina, the erstwhile stage actress, who muses aloud and audio-records hoping for an audience to receive her recitation.    

The collection includes four theatrical works of acclaimed Italian author, Dacia Maraini, in a dual-language format (Italian/English). The works have been chosen around the themes of distress, exclusion, and various manifestations of tragedy with particular reference to women. The works were chosen within a modern and a historical reference in order to give breadth to the main themes. The individual works include: (a) Stravaganza/Extravagance. The unfolding drama alludes to the Legge Basaglia (the so-called Basaglia Law, 180/1978), whose prescriptions included the closure of insane asylums throughout Italy; (b) Camille. In this piece, Maraini offers a reinterpretation of the storied and controversial relationship between the sculptor, Auguste Rodin, and his young apprentice/assistant, Camille Claudel; (c) Storia di Isabella di Morra raccontata da Benedetto Croce/The Story of Isabella di Morra as Told by Benedetto Croce. In this play, the power of literature and the written word (the implicit, culpable "character" in this play) culminates in atrocious homicide; (d) I digiuni di Catarina da Siena/The Fasting of Catherine of Siena. Powerful relationships dominate this account of Saint Catherine's profound religiosity.

This collection brings together three international and contemporary plays that each denounce violence against women, alongside interviews with the creators and practitioners who brought them to life. With interviews with writers, directors and producers, who discuss the conception and staging of their plays, their hope is to de-glamourize the staging of violence, to give voice to the survivors of gendered violence, and to create awareness and empathy within the audiences. Little Stitches (London, 2014): four short pieces by Isley Lynn, Raul Quiros Molina , Bahar Brunton and Karis E. Halsall on the issue of Female Genital Mutilation as seen from the point of view of by-standers, health professionals, women who support the practice and, finally, survivors. 'Kubra' (Sydney, 2016) by Dacia Maraini, features a young female protagonist who was subjected to FGM/C as a child, and now brings her case to court. Rape Trial (Rome, 2018), adapted for theatre by Renato Chiocca from the international award-winning documentary of the same title made for Italian state television in 1979, shows how attitudes toward sexual violence, and judicial procedures, tend to turn rape survivors from accusers into accused, in court and in everyday discourse.

Winner of the Premio Campiello (Italy's equivalent of the National Book Award), short-listed for the Independent Foreign Fiction Award upon its first English-language publication in the U.K., and published to critical acclaim in fourteen languages, this mesmerizing historical novel by one of Italy's premier women writers is available in the United States for the first time. Set in Sicily in the early eighteenth century, The Silent Duchess is the story of Marianna Ucra, the daughter of an aristocratic family and the victim of a mysterious childhood trauma that has left her deaf and mute, trapped in a world of silence. Set apart from the world by her disability, Marianna searches for knowledge and fulfillment in a society where women face either forced marriages and endless childbearing or a life of renunciation within the walls of a convent. When she is just thirteen years old, Marianna is forced to marry her own aging uncle. Her status and wealth as a duchess cannot protect her from many of the horrors of that time: she witnesses her mother's decline due to her addiction to opium and snuff and her father's cruelly misguided religious piety as he participates in the hanging of a young boy. She watches helplessly as her four-year-old son dies of smallpox and her youngest daughter is married off at the age of twelve. It is not until the death of her uncle-husband that Marianna at last gains freedom from her life of subservience: she learns to manage her estates and to love a man as she had never loved her husband, and she also learns of the unspeakable events that led to her lifelong silence. In luminous language that conveys both the keen visual sight and the deep human insightpossessed by her remarkable main character, Dacia Maraini captures the splendor and the corruption of Marianna's world and the strength of her spirit. The Silent Duchess is the timeless story of one woman's struggle to find her own voice after years of silence. The publication in America of The Silent Duchess is cause for rejoicing.-Publishers Weeklya carefully paced story of intellectual and moral growth.-KirkusMaraini's writing is elegant, and her graphic descriptions of the luxurious life of the aristocracy in sharp contrast to the squalor of the majority living in poverty are quite realistic. . . . Recommended. . . wherever foreign authors are popular.- Library JournalSuggested for course use in: FictionComparative literatureItalian literatureOne of Italy's foremost women writers, Dacia Maraini is the winner of the international Prix Formentor and the Premio Campiello, one of Italy's highest literary honors. She is the author of more than fifty books, including novels, plays, collections of poetry, and critical essays.

The Plays Libration by Lluisa Cunill (Spain): A mysterious, intense and comic two-hander about two women who meet in a city park at night. The End Of The Dream Season by Miriam Kainy (Israel): A woman doctor outwits her friends and relations to retain her inheritance. Harsh Angel by Maria Avraamidou (Cyprus): A gentle Chekhovian tale of a family torn by the partition of their native land. Mephisto adapted from the novel by Klaus Mann/ Ariane Mnouchkine (France/Germany): The story of a German actor who sells his soul to Nazi ideology. Also a feature film.

WOMAN AT WAR is the diary of a woman's growing self-awareness. Beginning as a passively absent narrator, Vannina encounters a fascinating array of characters during the holiday she takes on an island in the Bay of Naples with her husband, Giacinto. When he returns to work in a garage in Rome, Vannina travels to Naples with Suna, a friend she has made on vacation. This startling character opens Vannina to the possibility of finding love through other women and helps her reject the role of serving coffee to the men who would change the world through violence. Back in Rome, Vannina rejects her former life and moves toward complete, if difficult, independence. Maraini's writing is superb. Its warm and sensual style gives life to details: the food of the Mediterranean, the smell of its herbs, the acts of making coffee and making love, the step-by-step journey of an individual to self-awareness, self-reliance and independence. Everything is vivid and vibrant. Maraini's women grow in strength beyond the clamor of political slogans. The values of understanding, intuition and compassion effect real change that transcends the wearisome struggle between the chauvinisms of the political Right and the political correctness of the Left. A milestone in Italian literature.

Maraini uses language and stylistics, rather than description, to define her three women protagonists. Lori, the youngest of the three women, uses the impetuous, spontaneous language of youth, late adolescence. Lori's mother, Maria uses the protracted language of a romantic, a learned researcher, and most significantly a translator who chooses words with intention in an attempt to bridge cultures, experiences and, in this case, generations. The grandmother Gesuina, a former stage actress, has a voice that is brutally honest, provocative, escapist. All three voices reflect the essence of the characters: Lori, the reckless teenager who flies off on her moped, her life's speed represented by her diary without punctuation; Maria, the pensive translator whose detailed observations are so concentrated on the word that she does not see the circumstances that are unfolding around her; Gesuina, the erstwhile stage actress, who muses aloud and audio-records hoping for an audience to receive her recitation.