When it comes to adultery, however, sometimes you have to turn a blind eye.

“If one of those things explodes, the city’ll blow up too.”

You always talked about Crevalcore when it rained.

I come from a country with close to ninety languages.

“When we get to Tripoli, you're on your own.”

The tongues of flesh were captivating as they rose and fell, row by row, like a wave, the wings moving only slightly.

I am a thief of strong emotions. I listen to the moans and shouts of others.

That was me once, soaking wet in the rain, one fall long ago; that was me taking a beating from some fat, greasy, gray-haired guy,

This tiny, tiny kid shot down the right aisle, then under the screen, then popped up the left aisle, to the back of the theater, and started all over again—propeller going all the while.

Today the six characters will take off their shoes, one by one, and will take their spots on the bed.

From Quaderni Ucraini. Copyright 2010 by Igort. Rights arranged through Nicolas Grivel. Translation copyright 2011 by Jamie Richards. All rights reserved.

Then Marcello showed her the stake in his hand, dirty from the tip almost to the hook at the other end, with something black dripping onto the ground.

The match was held in an arena, semicircular in shape, behind the town hall.

After lunch, my grandmother always insisted we go take a nap.

In other words, the young man concluded, even an intelligent person can happen to say something stupid now and then!

this is how the clan defrauds the fruit dump[...]

Not crossing the street: it was already baking hot, so hot that a body would automatically choose to walk in the shade.

Seven thirty in the morning. My autumn heart is still beating slowly.

Author’s Note: “The Pig” is an allegorical short story, but its scope is not so restricted as it may seem at first. It would be more correctly defined as a “civil” story,…

For seventeen years I had dreamed of what my return to my country would be like.

It was the night before Christmas Eve. The clock had just struck midnight, and a thick blanket of damp air hung over Villaggio Coppola.

What time was it? Who was that out there, and why were they continuing to ring my doorbell?

A man who cannot resist something hot on his tongue will not be able to resist the spicy character of an Ethiopian woman.

By Nicole Rudick The appeal of some translated works lies in their ability to relate specific events to a broad foreign audience. Others operate in reverse, projecting a nonspecific vantage that…

One morning when she and her mother were making the bed--she was on one side, her mother on the other--Cecilia showed the first sign of madness.

The departure came in the month of March, when the thaw opened up the passes, which in our mountains were like gateways toward the countries of central Europe.

When they reached Via Merulana: the crowd. Outside the entrance, the black of the crowd, with its wreath of bicycle wheels.

More than the snow he had to tramp through during the day, it was the cold of the night that made that time hard for him.

You'll do what I say, and that's it! Understand?

You even feel the kick in your lungs, and you see the smoke spreading over your papers, your books, your cup of coffee

The long, heavy ladle was lying on the floor when he discovered the murder.

It was still morning, and we felt ourselves heading into the sea as we sped along this last, ever-narrowing strip of Sicily.

When I was eight years old I decided to run away from home. There’s no sense explaining why right now. Maybe some other time. Let’s just say that where I used to live, on via Vincenzo Gemito…

They're killing all of us, we members of the rebellion.

In that idyllic, solitary place, she told herself, nothing base or cruel could ever happen: the harmony of the landscape softened the spirit, resolved conflict, relieved the soul.

Milan, he says, is like a spider's web, and the foreigners are the trapped flies.

The ditch we have to jump over is a gorge. Pinocchio is an odyssey. It's big and cumbersome.

Let's cut the anthology, the songs of repatriation. / Let's report the facts and words exactly.

Eureka! I said to myself. Now I understand. I had understood.

Mama confuses names, just like Nonna does, and even makes me make a fool of myself (just like them).

You have to be away from Italy to see Italy.

To win the challenge, the ghost had made a contorted face at me, the face of a lunatic.

Once he was certain that a man in the crowd had touched her. In front of everyone he hit her.

It appears unexpectedly, in its ancient and dark abyss. At the sight of it, I don't know why, I lost my breath and I slowed my step.

...perhaps reassured by the alcoholic content of the drink or perhaps answering to a distant sense of urgency, finally suggests, perhaps we shouldn't have cut the death of the father.

Aline . . . In another era, that girl would have been a fairy, one of those superhuman creatures capable of transforming the men who come across their path.

The first pride Rosa felt on this day was for herself.

Time passed, and there, where the angel's feather lay, flowers began to bloom.

So it was that no one had ever been able to send him back to Hell once and for all.

and the land was left barren

What? Are you still scheming against the sun? As sure as you live, as sure as I am, in the world to come the sun will possess sevenfold the light that it now possesses.

Was there anyone Don Loll Zirafa didn't pick a fight with?

ITALIAN SOLDIERS!The Communist Party of Slovenia appeals to you:Do not carry out your superiors’ orders, do not fire on the Slovenians, do not persecute the partisans, but surrender to them, do…

She was terrified by His Holiness's utter silence.

Behind him the Tiber is an abyss drawn on tissue paper.