The House of Others

Called "a perfect story" by Nobel Prize-winning poet Eugenio Montale, The House of Others (Casa d'altri) is the title story in the best-known work by twentieth-century Italian author Ezio Comparoni, writing under the name Silvio d'Arzo, one of his numerous pseudonyms. In a desolate mountain village an old woman visits the parish priest, ostensibly to ask about dissolving a marriage. Gradually, as she probes for information on "special cases"--cases in which what is obviously wrong can also be irrefutably right--it becomes clear her true question is whether or not she might take her own life. The question is metaphysical, involving not only the woman's life but the priest's; and to it he has no answer. Collected here with the short stories "Elegy for Signora Nodier," "The Old Couple," "A Moment of This Sort," and "Our Monday, A Preface," The House of Others is among the scant translations in English of this highly acclaimed Italian author.