The Outcast - Paperback

by Luigi Pirandello (Author), Bradford A. Masoni (Translator), Daniela Bini (Foreword by)

A young wife in a nineteenth-century Sicilian village, Marta is deeply in love with her husband Rocco and pregnant with his child. But when Rocco discovers a letter written to Marta by a would-be suitor, he falsely accuses her of infidelity and banishes her from their home. Soon the whole village turns against the supposed adulteress, setting in motion a series of tragic events that culminates in the loss of Marta's family home and business, as well as the deaths of her father and newborn child. Plunged into poverty and treated as a social leper, with practically nothing else to lose, Marta is determined to claw her way back into a society bent on excluding her.

The Outcast is an early masterwork from Nobel Prize-winning Italian author Luigi Pirandello that combines elements of Zolaesque naturalism with emerging modernist aesthetics. This fresh English translation, the first in nearly one hundred years, showcases Pirandello's deft play with language and his use of irony.

This book was translated thanks to a grant awarded by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation.

Author Biography

LUIGI PIRANDELLO (1867 -1936) was an Italian dramatist, novelist, poet, and short story writer who found his first mainstream success with the novel Il fu Mattia Pascal in 1904. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1934. Pirandello's works include seven collections of poetry, seven novels, hundreds of short stories, and about forty plays.

BRADFORD A. MASONI is a writer, editor, and translator who specializes in literary modernism with a particular focus on the transition from nineteenth-century literary realism into modernism. His most recent work is a scholarly study of The Outcast entitled Pirandello Proto-Modernist: A New Reading of "L'eclusa." He lives in Minnesota.

DANIELA BINI is a professor of Italian and comparative literature at the University of Texas, Austin, where she chaired the Department of French and Italian for eight years. She was named Cavaliere (Ordine della Stella della Solidarietà Italiana) by the president of the Italian Republic, Giorgio Napolitano, in 2007.