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Giovanni Tempesta has been a professor of Italian Language and Culture at Stanford University since 1983. He was born and raised in Italy, where he started writing short stories and poetry at the age of 14. He moved to California in 1971. This collection of original short stories was first written in Italian, and then carefully translated into English.
Tempesta’s stories explore complexities that are both profound and profoundly human, for example in cultural differences between life in the USA and in Italy. Most of his stories ask the reader to consider such questions as whether friendship possesses substance beyond illusion, and whether new life and new joy can emerge from surrender to aestheticized memories.
Translating short stories is an arduous task but he succeeded in recreating in English, the emotional impact of his original stories in Italian.
The importance of his writing lies in his capacity to generate dialogue.
A reader must actively engage his texts, not to arbitrarily construct meaning, but to capture the abundance of subtlety and nuance that his work evokes. His prose (just like his poetry) does not ask to be received or decoded. Rather, it asks the reader to reflect on it and converse with it.
Sommario:
La barba
Hai ingioiato la checca?
L’America ti ha rovinato!
A cena con Fluffy
I colori della bandiera
Sale
Il figlio del prete
Pippo e Birbonie
U scarpare
Le emorroidi
Una sorpresa in tasca
Il futuro dottore
Il grande polipo vivo
Padre provolone
Tu di qui non ti muovi!
Las scuola della strada, la scuola della vita
La grande delusione
La voce
