Little Novels of Sicily: Novelle Rusticane

Little Novels of Sicily - “Novelle Rusticane” - Giovanni Verga - translated by D. H. Lawrence Little Novels of Sicily - Novelle Rusticane - Giovanni Verga. Translated by D. H. Lawrence. Giovanni Carmelo Verga (2 September 1840 - 27 January 1922) was an Italian realist (Verismo) writer, best known for his depictions of life in his native Sicily, and especially for the short story (and later play) Cavalleria Rusticana and the novel I Malavoglia (The House by the Medlar Tree). The first son of Giovanni Battista Catalano Verga and Caterina Di Mauro, Verga was born into a prosperous family of Catania in Sicily. Giovanni Verga, the Sicilian novelist and playwright, is surely the greatest writer of Italian fiction, after Manzoni. Verga was born in Catania, Sicily, in 1840, and died in the same city, at the age of eighty-two, in January, 1922. As a young man he left Sicily to work at literature and mingle with society in Florence and Milan, and these two cities, especially the latter, claim a large share of his mature years. He came back, however, to his beloved Sicily, to Catania, the seaport under Etna, to be once more Sicilian of the Sicilians and spend his long declining years in his own place.