"Eroticism, it seems to me, is something hidden, something that doesn't come out, doesn't let itself be discovered. In those places where it announces itself, where it is put on view and put on sale, it is not to be found . . . so as to appear later, even slyly, in a place where no one expected to seek it, ambiguous and crafty, furtive and fitting."--from "The Zipper" by Dacia Maraini
For centuries, the stereotypical image of the voluptuous Italian woman has served as an object of desire for Western man: from the paintings of Venetian courtesans who modeled for the erotically charged canvases of Titian, Veronese, and Tintoretto, to nineteenth-century reports of the beautiful dancer Marie Taglioni, to the twentieth-century cinematic images of Sophia Loren and Dominique Sanda.
Now Italian women have turned the tables. In this volume, acclaimed novelist Maria Rosa Cutrufelli brings together fourteen short erotic stories by contemporary Italian women writers. Well-established voices are juxtaposed with new ones; traditional forms provide a contrast with the experimental. In Sandra Petrignani's dialogue "Body," a women and a former lover engage in a heady debate about desire and indifference; Margherita Giacobino delivers a tale of lesbian desire, a theme uncommon in Italian literature; Dacia Maraini writes on the literature of eroticism penned by women writers that ingeniously manages to be erotic in its own right; and Rossana Campo offers a hip-rattling tri-logue on love voiced by three super-cool adolescents. In her introductory essay on the nature of desire and seduction, Cutrufelli draws in writers such as Jean Baudrillard, Angela Carter, and Georges Bataille. Available for thefirst time in English, "In the Forbidden City" constitutes a breakthrough volume in literary erotica that is both profound and engaging.