Published in 1880, one year before Verga’s influential novel The Malavoglias, Life in the Country first marked his stylistic shift towards the verismo school of Italian realism. The collection’s centrepiece, ‘Rustic Honour’ (‘Cavalleria rusticana’) – which was famously adapted into a play by the author before becoming an opera by Mascagni – tells the tale of Turiddu, a poor young man who returns from military service and finds himself embroiled in adultery and a feud with a rival.
Also including the well-known stories ‘She-Wolf’ and ‘Foxfur’, Life in the Country captures, in an objective, non-judgemental prose, the difficult conditions and personal struggles of the peasant class in his native Sicily at the turn of the twentieth century.
- ISBN10 1847497713
- ISBN13 9781847497710
- Publish Date 20 September 2018 (first published 1 April 2003)
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country GB
- Publisher Alma Books Ltd
- Imprint Alma Classics
- Format Paperback
- Pages 128
- Language English