The Smell of Hay

(Paperback)

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A new translation of this haunting collection of short stories that evoke 1930s Ferrara, with an introduction by Ali Smith Isolated lives and a lost world are evoked in these haunting stories set in the Jewish-Italian community of 1930s Ferrara. A young man's unrequited love; a strange disappearance; a faded hotel; a lonely funfair; the smell of mown hay at the gates of the Jewish Cemetery - these vivid, impressionistic snapshots build a picture of life's brevity and intensity. Part of the sequence including The Gold-Rimmed Spectacles and The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, and featuring people and places from these novels, The Smell of Hay is told with a voice that is by turns intimate, ironic, elegiac and rueful. This new translation contains two pieces, added by Bassani to his earlier collection, which have never appeared in English before.

Reviews

Giorgio Bassani is one of the great witnesses of this century, and one of its great artists * Guardian *

Author Bio

Giorgio Bassani (Author) Giorgio Bassani was born in 1916. From 1938 onwards he became involved in various anti-fascist activities for which he was imprisoned in 1943. His works include The Gold-Rimmed Spectacles, and Five Stories of Ferrara (Within the Walls), which won the Strega Prize. The Garden of the Finzi-Continis was awarded the Viareggio Prize in 1962 and was made into a feature film.