This representative collection of works by the late Elio Vittorini (1908-1966) brings under a single cover three short novels. The Twilight of the Elephant (II Sempione strizza l’occhio al Fréjus, 1946) is a haunting, mythlike tale bearing strong affinities with music and abstract art. It is the story of a poverty-stricken family and its extraordinary grandfather––a veritable “elephant” of a man. One of the recognized classics of modern literature, In Sicily (Conversazione in Sicilia, 1937) recounts a city man’s rediscovery of himself and the basic values of life when he...

The novel begins at a time in the narrator's life when nothing seems to matter; whether he is reading newspaper posters blaring of wartime massacres, lying in bed with his wife or girlfriend, or flipping through the pages of a dictionary it is all the same to him until he embarks on a journey back to Sicily, the home he has not seen in some fifteen years. In traveling through the Sicilian countryside and in variously hilarious and tragic conversations with its people his indomitable mother in particular he reconnects with his roots and rediscovers some basic human values In the introduction...

This novel begins at a time in the unnamed narrator's life when nothing seems to matter. He is filled with a deep sense of ennui and feels disconnected from all that surrounds him. That is until he embarks on a journey to Sicily, the home he has not seen in some 15 years.