An NYRB Classics Original
Tove Jansson excelled at the brief tale, writing stories that in their short spans unfold to reveal entire worlds. This is true of her internationally syndicated cartoon strip about a family of hippo-like creatures, the Moomins; of her beloved Moomin novels; and of her best-selling books for adults, like "The Summer Book." Until now, however, Jansson's short stories have been nearly impossible to find in the United States. This volume brings together, for the first time in English, a generous selection of stories from the most fruitful period of her career, from her earliest collected stories, dating from the early 1970s, to her mature work, written not long before her death in 2001. In them are moments of the sublime and the mundane, as well as small heroisms and large griefs. Unsentimental, yet kind and humane, Jansson's short stories complement and enlarge our understanding of a giant of world literature.

Vincenzo Chironi sets foot for the first time on the island of Sardinia - 'a raft in the middle of the Mediterranean' - in 1943, a year of famine and malaria. All he has with him is an old document as proof of his name and date of birth, but to find out who he really is he has had to undertake an even more stressful journey than the one he has just faced in the steamer from mainland Italy to Sardinia. At Núoro he will find his grandfather, a master blacksmith, who will act as a substitute father but also as an accomplice to him, and his aunt Marianna, who greets the unexpected arrival of a previously unknown nephew as an opportunity to redeem a life previously afflicted by misfortune. Years later, when the presence of Vincenzo Chironi in Núoro seems to have become taken for granted, as natural as the sea and rocks, his blood asserts itself. Vincenzo meets Cecilia, a beautiful girl with eyes of an undefinable shade who is a wartime refugee from elsewhere in Sardinia, and falling in love seems the only course open to either of them. Never mind that she is already engaged to Nicola, a boy with whom Vincenzo is indirectly connected by marriage through his aunt Marianna . . . Even if it may be a fact that "disobedience must involve punishment", it may also be true that love cannot avoid adding the latest link to an endless chain.

The bitch. That's what the crew call me. The bitch. They say it behind my back. But I can hear them. My name's Helen, I was born in Sparta, but I went away for love. They used to say I was the most beautiful woman in the world. The minstrels are already making up stories about how little I've won and how much I've lost. Lying tales. They weren't there, after all. But I was. From her childhood in Sparta, through the turbulent years of her marriage, and of course her disappearance with Paris and its consequences, Helen of Troy tells her own story. In a lyrical and musical style, Helen sheds her legendary persona and walks from the page as a real woman of flesh and blood; the archetype of all the women who, throughout history, have followed their hearts, forsaking wealth and power.

Endowing family horrors with mythical resonance, Marcello Fois creates an unforgettable tale of twentieth-century Sardinia. When Guiseppe Mundula first sees Michele Angelo Chironi across the corridor of a Sardinian orphanage, the blacksmith realizes that he has found the son and heir he never knew he needed. And when a few years later, Michele himself looks down from the ladder on which he is working and sees the beautiful Mercede, he knows that he has found the woman he will marry. So begins Fois' magisterial domestic epic of the lives, loves, and losses of the Chironi family as they struggle through war and fascism and their own tragedy.

A stunning portrait of rural Italy in the 1950s and "a touching meditation on life and death and the power of love to bind, transcend, and let go" (Publishers Weekly). At one time betrothed to a fallen soldier, Bonaria Urrai of Sardinia has a long-held covenant with the dead. Midwife to the dying, easing their suffering and sometimes ending it, she is revered and feared in equal measure as her village's Accabadora. When Bonaria adopts Maria, the unloved fourth child of a widow, she tries to shield the girl from the truth about her role as an angel of mercy. Moved by the pleas of a young man crippled in an accident, Bonaria breaks her golden rule of familial consent. In the recriminations that follow, Maria rejects her and flees Sardinia for Turin. Adrift in the big city, Maria strives as ever to find love and acceptance, but her efforts are overshadowed by the creeping knowledge of a debt unpaid, of a duty and destiny that must one day be hers. Accabadora is Michaela Murgia's exceptional English-language debut and has been awarded seven major literary prizes, including Italy's prestigious Premio Campiello. "Poignant, honest, and magical, this is a dazzling story for the senses, and one I will not soon forget." --Susan Sherman, author of The Little Russian

One of Elena Ferrante's best 40 books by female writers When Maria, the fourth child of a widow, is adopted by the old and childless Bonaria Urrai, her life is instantly transformed - she finally has the love and affection she craves. But her new 'soul mother' is keeping something hidden from her, a secret life that is intimately bound-up with Sardinia's ancient traditions and customs. Midwife to the dying, easing their suffering and sometimes ending it, she is revered and feared in equal measure as the village's Accabadora. Bonaria tries to shield the girl from the truth about her role as an angel of mercy, until, moved by the pleas of a young man crippled in an accident, she breaks her golden rule of familial consent. The consequences - for Bonaria, for Maria and for the whole village, are devastating - and cause a rift between the two women that can only be bridge by another death. Translated from the Italian by Silvester Mazzarella

"A superior police procedural" Mark Sanderson, The Times Crime Club "Northern Italy's answer to Inspector Montalbano" Alessandro Baricco September 2008. Commissario Arcadipane arrives at the scene of a macabre discovery: the bones of twelve men and women buried in the countryside near Torino. By the next morning, a task force specialising in mass graves from WWII is already in place. But something doesn't feel right: one of the femurs shows signs of an operation that couldn't have taken place before the seventies. Suspecting a cover-up, Arcadipane launches his own investigation, enlisting his old mentor, Corso Bramard, long retired, and Isa, a young officer still haunted by the unexplained death of her father. These mismatched allies - one at last at peace, one jaded to the point of breakdown and one under a permanent disciplinary cloud - will unveil a cruel political conspiracy that someone wants covered up for the second time. Translated from the Italian by Silvester Mazzarella

Edith Soedergran's vital, compelling and very personal poems have been translated into many languages, and several times into English. Written for the most part when she was dying of tuberculosis in a remote Finnish frontier village only a short train journey away from revolutionary Petrograd, they are a major contribution to European modernism. These letters are almost all that remains to us of her work, apart from the poetry. The most personal of them were written between 1919 and 1923 to two like-minded young Finland-Swedish writers, Hagar Olsson and Elmer Diktonius. They are unusually spontaneous and show Soedergran in many moods, passionate and caring, intransigent, desperate for human contact, and racked by religious doubts that threaten to stifle the very poetry for which she lived. The collection is accompanied by an introduction and notes which both contextualize the letters and greatly enhance our understanding of Soedergran's life and poetry."

When Giuseppe Mundula first sees Michele Angelo Chironi across the corridor of a Sardinian orphanage, the reserved blacksmith realises he has found the son and heir he never knew he needed. And when, a few years later, Michele himself looks down from a church rooftop and sees the beautiful Mercede, the quiet orphan realises he has found the woman he will marry. So begins Marcello Fois' magisterial domestic epic of the lives and loves of the Chironi family, as they struggle through war and fascism. Deftly endowing familial horrors with mythical resonance, Fois creates a Dantesque triptych that inscribes the history of twentieth-century Sardinia onto a single misbegotten household.

Italy is on the brink of collapse. Borders are closed, banks withhold money, the postal service stalls. Armed gangs of drug-fuelled youths roam the countryside. Leonardo was a famous writer and professor before a sex scandal ended his marriage and career. Heading north in search of her new husband, his ex-wife leaves their daughter and her son in his care. If he is to take them to safety, he will need to find a quality he has never possessed: courage.

Cristian is enterprising and determined. Maddalena is tenacious and quite able to imagine - and defend - her own future. Cristian and Maddalena have always known each other, and if fate had not gone awry they might already be married. But between them, exactly in the middle, there is Domenico: Cristian's childhood friend who has grown up alongside him like a brother. And when Cristian succumbs to the fate of the Chironis - that curse of illnesses, murders and suicides that has blighted his family over the years - it is Domenico that Maddalena marries. Taking his trilogy of the Chironi family up to the present day, Marcello Fois has woven a delicately detailed story, full of dormant passions, plot twists, betrayals and reconciliations. The epic scope and the dramatic tension of his writing means that while his trilogy might be the story of one family on a tiny island, it has a universality, a humanity and a power to speak to anyone of us.