"Giovanni Verga is one of the masters of European literature, and his novel The House by the Medlar Tree is a great work. I am very happy to see it reprinted and I hope that many people will read it."--Iriving Howe

The House by the Medlar Tree is a realist work concerning Sicilian life and the dangers of economic and social turmoil. The story focuses on the hardworking and happy Malavoglia family that borrows money from a local lender against unreceived cargo, they wish to resell. When it is lost at sea, the family attempts everything in their power to repay the debt. Several setbacks follow as the family faces trouble from every quarter. Whatever dreams the family formulated over three generations, they witness them destroyed and struggle to make ends meet. This story of the family of fishermen is set in Aci Trezza, a small Sicilian village near Catania, where life revolves around constant gossip about honor, money, and marriage. The novel maintains a choral element and portrays characters that are united by the same culture but divided by ancient feuds. The tone is kept light through the irony with which the author depicts the characters and their peculiarities. The story is a remarkable portrayal of the life of an unlucky family in a Sicilian village and is full of sorrow, loss, warmth, and redemption.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1973.

Left nothing but a ramshackle farm house when her business titan husband dies, Lillian changes her identity to escape the press and wonders at the mysterious note left to her by her late husband that asks her to find out what happened.

Since the beginning, much of Italian cinema has been sustained by transforming literature into moving images. This tradition of literary adaptation continues today, challenging artistic form and practice by pressuring the boundaries that traditionally separate film from its sister arts. In the twentieth century, director Luchino Visconti is a keystone figure in Italy's evolving art of adaptation. From the tumultuous years of Fascism and postwar Neorealism, through the blockbuster decade of the 1960s, into the arthouse masterpieces of the 1970s, Visconti's adaptations marked a distinct pathway of the Italian cinematic imagination. Luchino Visconti and the Alchemy of Adaptation examines these films together with their literary antecedents. Moving past strict book-to-film comparisons, it ponders how literary texts encounter and interact with a history of cultural and cinematic forms, genres, and traditions. Matching the major critical concerns of the postwar period (realism, political filmmaking, cinematic modernism) with more recent notions of adaptation and intermediality, this book reviews how one of Italy's greatest directors mined literary ore for cinematic inspiration.

The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin is Beatrix Potter’s second book. It tells the story of an impertinent and funny red squirrel and of Mr. Brown, an old owl who lives in an island. Nutkin, his brother and their cousins sail to the island on little rafts. There they offer Mr. Brown a gift and ask him permission to gather nuts in the island. That’s when Nutkin starts being silly and impertinent. Squirrel Nutkin was born in a letter to Norah Moore, daughter of a governess who became Beatrix Potter’s friend. The illustrations represent Derwentwater, in the Lake District, where Beatrix Potter spent her summer holiday for some time. The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin, published after The Tale of Peter Rabbit but quite different from it, has been a tremendous hit to this day.

Mogie is a real-life Labradoodle with a special talent: he always knows just what a sick kid needs! Get to know this passionate pup with this story by a Newbery Honoree. Give that dog a puddle and he’d splash. Give him a whistle and he’d roll over. Give him a rule and he’d break it. One day a passel of puppies was born. Each puppy was designated for a Very Important Job, like Service Dog, or Search and Rescue Dog, or Groomed for the Show Ring Dog. Each puppy, that is, except Mogie. Mogie was a ball-chasing, tail-wagging, moon-howling pup. Not the kind of pup for any of those jobs! But there is a place that is just right for Mogie: a very special house where sick children and their families can stay while they undergo long-term treatment. A place with children who NEED a ball-chasing, tail-wagging, moon-howling pup. And there’s one little boy in particular who needs Mogie. And Mogie is about to prove he’s the best darn pooch in the passel. Based on a true story, this heartwarming picture book is published in conjunction with the Ronald McDonald House.

This great classic of Italian fiction tells the story of the Malavoglians, a family of Sicilian fishermen. It is an exciting and tragic record of struggle against material forces which the humble Sicilians did not understand.

This is the first English translation of Verga's novel La Storia di una Capinera and is the official tie-in with the Zeffirelli film Sparrow. Set in 1854 in a Sicily devastated by a cholera epidemic. Sparrow tells of a love that can never be; the brief existence of a girl, forced to become a nun, who falls in love with a young man, but who, on returning to the convent, goes insane. Zeffirelli chose to film Sparrow as he was intrigued by the need for idealised and absolute love. "It is a challenge for me to tell of 'The Insanity of Absolute Love' with its emotional yearnings and enchantment, its exchanges of furtive glances and stolen caresses".