by Antonio Tabucchi (Author), Frances Frenaye (Translator)
The eleven short stories in this prize-winning collection pivot on life's ambiguities and the central question they pose in Tabucchi's fiction: is it choice, fate, accident, or even, occasionally, a kind of magic that plays the decisive role in the protagonists' lives? Blended with the author's wonderfully intelligent imagination is his compassionate perception of elemental aspects of the human experience, be it grief as in "Waiting for Winter," about the widow of a nation's literary lion, or madcap adventure as in "The Riddle," about a mysterious lady and a trip in Proust's Bugatti Royale.
Back Jacket
'Misunderstandings, uncertainties, belated understandings, useless remorse, treacherous memories, stupid and irredeemable mistakes, all these irresistibly fascinate me, ' the Italian writer Antonio Tabucchi remarks. 'Life is by nature ambiguous and distributes ambiguities among all of us.' This side of life is reflected in these eleven stories. Is it choice, fate, accident, or even, occasionally, a kind of magic that plays the decisive role in the protagonists' lives?