Abecedary

Product Description In James Marcus's fluid translation, Abecedary's brief and moving vignettes combine a loving attention to the mundane and the everyday--meals and clothing, furniture and phone calls, flashes of landscape or weather--with an abundance of tangible detail, alluding always to that most intangible and fleeting of subjects: human feeling. Amazon.com Review In each of these 22 miniatures, the Italian author focuses on a particular emotion and illustrates it with a short (very short) story. Parise is a master of the luminous detail, whether he's zooming in on a meal, a kiss, or a thunderstorm. Yet the cumulative effect of these details is surprisingly powerful, and an object lesson to Parise's minimalist cousins in this country. Review "Exquisite miniatures . . . some of Goffredo Parise's work is as subtle as James Joyce's." --New York Times Book Review"Hypnotic, mood-inducing stories that cast a hard spell to shake." --Kirkus Reviews About the Author Goffredo Parise was born in Italy in 1929. During his lifetime he published over a dozen volumes: novels, collections of stories, and essays. He died in 1986.James Marcus, a translator, critic, and writer, lives in Seattle.Natalia Ginzburg is the author of several works including Picolle Virtu (Little Virtues) and Famiglia (Family). She lives in Italy.