A new translation of Giorgio Bassani`s haunting collection of short stories that evoke 1930s Ferrara, with an introduction by Ali Smith. Isolated lives & a lost world are evoked in these memorable stories set in the Jewish-Italian community of 1930s Ferrara. A young man`s unrequited love; a strange disappearance; a faded hotel; a lonely funfair; the smell of mown hay at the gates of the Jewish Cemetery
- these vivid, impressionistic snapshots build a picture of life`s brevity & intensity. Part of the sequence including The Gold-Rimmed Spectacles & The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, & featuring people & places from these novels, The Smell of Hay is told with a voice that is by turns intimate, ironic, elegiac & rueful. This new translation contains two pieces, added by Bassani to his earlier collection, which have never appeared in English before. ” Powerful new translations... Bassani began as a poet, & Mc Kendrick`s redelivery of this taut uncompromising fiction reveals resonance & generosity”. (Ali Smith). ” Giorgio Bassani is one of the great witnesses of this century, & one of its great artists”. (Guardian). Giorgio Bassani (1916-2000) was an Italian poet, novelist & editor. The Smell of Hay is the last in a series of six works collected together as Il romanzo di Ferrara. Other works in the cycle include The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, which received the Viareggio Prize & inspired an Academy Award-winning film adaptation by Vittorio de Sica, The Gold-Rimmed Spectacles, & Within the Walls (originally published as Five Stories of Ferrara), which won the Strega Prize. Jamie Mc Kendrick is a poet & translator. His translations of Bassani`s The Garden of the Finzi-Continis & The Gold-Rimmed Spectacles are already available as Penguin Modern Classics, & he is in the process of translating the rest of the Romanzo di Ferrara cycle anew.