Little Misunderstandings of No Importance

by Antonio Tabucchi, Frances Frenaye (Translator)

Overview

The eleven short stories in this prize-winning collection pivot on life's ambiguities and the central question they pose in Tabucchi's fiction: is it choice, fate, accident, or even, occasionally, a kind of magic that plays the decisive role in the protagonists' lives?

The eleven short stories in this prize-winning collection pivot on life's ambiguities and the central question they pose in Tabucchi's fiction: is it choice, fate, accident, or even, occasionally, a kind of magic that plays the decisive role in the protagonists' lives? Blended with the author's wonderfully intelligent imagination is his compassionate perception of elemental aspects of the human experience, be it grief as in "Waiting for Winter," about the widow of a nation's literary lion, or madcap adventure as in "The Riddle," about a mysterious lady and a trip in Proust's Bugatti Royale.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780811211116
Publisher:	New Directions Publishing Corporation
Publication date:	09/17/1989
Series:	New Directions Paperbook
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	144
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 8.10(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Antonio Tabucchi was born in Pisa in 1943 and died in Lisbon, his adopted home, in 2012. Over the course of his career he won France’s Medicis Prize for Indian Nocturne, the Italian PEN Prize for Requiem, and the Aristeion Prize for Pereira Maintains. A staunch critic of the former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, he once said that “democracy isn’t a state of perfection, it has to be improved, and that means constant vigilance.”

Frances Frenaye (1908–1996) was an American translator of French and Italian literary works. She worked at the Italian Cultural Institute from 1963 to 1980 and was responsible for editing its newsletter. She won the Denyse Clairouin Memorial Award (1951) for her translation from French to English of Georges Blond’s The Plunderers and J.H.R. Lenormand’s Renee. She also wrote for an Italian newspaper, Il Mondo, for some time. Frenaye graduated from Bryn Mawr College and spent 50 years living in Manhattan before dying in Miami Beach.

Editorial Reviews

The author's opening note admits his fascination with ``uncertainties, belated understandings, useless remorse, treacherous memories.'' Such are the ambiguous situations that inform these 11 pleasantly brooding tales. Translated from the Italian of Tabucchi (Letter from Casablanca), their flavor is international, with settngs that include Paris, Lisbon, Madras, and New York. ``Sleight of Hand'' involves an undercover rendezvous in which a mysterious packet is delivered during a performance at the Metropolitan Opera. The two contacts, a man and a woman, develop an intimacy not scripted by their duties. Art and actuality mingle in ``Cinema'' when an actor and actress find truth in the lines they recite before the camera. In ``Rooms,'' the aging Amelia reflects before burning the writings left by her famous brother, now dead: words ``imprison things, hardening them into a glassy fixity,'' but realities can never be captured. Tabucchi's ruminative musing will appeal to readers who care about the subtlest relationships among families, friends and lovers. (September 25)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly