Description
Set in the northern Italian city of Ferrara, these five interlinked novellas trace the lives of Jews and gentiles across decades of shifting power, from the tightening grip of fascism to the devastation of the Holocaust. Through self-contained stories—ranging from a working-class woman abandoned by her bourgeois lover, to the social fractures of intermarriage, to the testimony of a survivor—Bassani reveals how class, intimacy, and belonging are tested by prejudice and political violence. The book’s emotional center is shaped by the 1943 deportations of Ferrara’s Jewish community, a “conditioning fact” that casts a long shadow over the town’s memory and moral reckoning. With Bassani’s luminous, precise style and his hallmark ability to let characters echo across stories, the collection becomes a portrait of three generations—tender, divided, and ultimately vulnerable to history’s cruelty.
Available Editions
paperback
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich
Published Jan 1, 1971
203 pages
ISBN: 0151314004
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Details
First Published
1971
Language
eng
Translation
From: ita
Content Warnings
Content and trigger warnings for Five Stories of Ferrara by Giorgio Bassani.