Message from the Shadows
Selected Stories
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
This new, expanded collection of Antonio Tabucchi's stories collects the best short fiction from the Italian author recognized as one of the masters of the form.
Message From the Shadows is a new collection featuring Antonio Tabucchi's finest short stories, spanning the breadth of his career. These playful tales explore Tabucchi's signature themes, from his inventive, lyrical meditations on language, art, and philosophy, to his fascination with the passage of time, and the mystery of storytelling.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The 22 elegant short stories in this posthumous collection highlight the international perspective, melancholy tone, humor, and compassion of Italian author Tabucchi (1943 2012). A scholar of Portuguese literature, Tabucchi writes about Portugal with wistful familiarity. In "The Reversal Game," the narrator a scholar of Portuguese literature visits Lisbon after the death of a woman he secretly conspired with to help exiled Portuguese writers communicate with their families. Other narrators include a female impersonator in "Letter from Casablanca" and an eel fisherman turned murderer turned fado singer in "The Woman of Porto Pim." In "Riddle," an antique auto restorer drives a countess to Biarritz in her Bugatti. Settings include rural and urban Italy, Argentina, France, Greece, India, Portugal, and Spain. Reality and fiction, lies and illusions, overlap. In "The Flying Creatures of Fra Angelico," fantastic beasts from another dimension model for the Renaissance painter. The dark ambiance of political repression infuses "Night, Sea, or Distance," set in the last days of the Salazar regime, and "Islands," where a prisoner asks a favor of a prison guard. The postscript describes mankind from the point of view of a whale. Despite multiple translators and works spanning three decades, Tabucchi's intelligence and humane perspective shine throughout this thoughtful, noteworthy volume.
