“The Penguin book of Italian short stories” by Jhumpa Lahiri (ed) (Penguin, 2019)

No living writers. Her priority was "to feature women authors, lesser-known and neglected authors ... Eight of the authors on this list were born with different names". In the introduction she writes that

• "The proliferation of literary magazines after the [second world] war, the redoubled and innovative publishing initiatives and the spirit of community and collaboration among writers, means that this time is now regarded as something of a golden age in Italian literary culture"
• "The novel, according to Moravia, derives from reason, and is imbued with structure, elements that short stories routinely undermine and resist"
• She thinks that short stories are more naturally Italian than novels (imported from France).

In her introduction to Luce D'Eramo she writes "Few Italian writers intersected with the surrealist movement"

Each story has a useful introduction of a page or so – about the author, the story and its literary context. My brief descriptions below say about the plot, though often the voice/tone is more significant.

• Name and Tears (Elio Vittorini) - He writes her name in gravel. He looks for her. He hears her crying. All he finds is a wet handkerchief
• Picturesque Lives (Giovanni Verga) - A man recalls her ex-lover who, passing a village on a train, went back there for 2 days, but disliked it. He describes what the locals felt when they saw her, and what happened to them.
• The Siren (Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa) - Paolo, 25, dumped by 2 women on the same day, comes from an old Sicilian family. He's in Turin. He begins to drink each evening with a 75 y.o. prof of Greek, a senator who's wittily insulting. He's never slept with a woman. The prof tells him that when he was 24, he had an affair with a siren/mermaid for 3 weeks. She spoke a language like greek. She invited him to join her. Paolo leaves the senator. He hears later that he fell off a ship and had changed his will to leave Paolo a sculpture and a photo.
• Against time (Antonio Tabucchi) - It's 2008. A man, 50ish, flies to Crete, perhaps for a conference. He keeps driving as if he knows where he was going until he comes to a ruined monastery. There he says to an old monk "I've come to replace you". In 2028 a couple of walkers find a ruined monastery. An old monk asks them "What happened in 2008?" The storywriter is puzzled. A man lands in Crete and drives, seeming to know where he's going.
• Generous wine (Italo Svevo) - A husband with 2 teenage kids attends a niece's wedding meal. The niece had aspired to a cloistered life. He's world-weary, and wants to tell her what life's all about. He's allowed to forget about his strict diet. "Wine is old men's milk," a friend says. This sudden relaxation might help him find his true self. After the party he has trouble sleeping but pretends to be asleep when his wife asks if he's ok. He has a long. detailed, interesting dream. He wakes, asking his wife "How will we ever win our children's forgiveness for having given them this life?"
• The long voyage (Leonardo Sciascia) - Poor Sicilians meet on a beach, having paid to be taken to the States. After 12 uncomfortable nights they're put ashore. They gradually realise they're in Sicily.
• Bago (Alberto Savinio) - A wife (married to an old friend of the family) has gone through several imaginary friends. She says hello to Bago each morning, and goodbye at night. Billi, a previous friend, returns, hiding in her wardrobe when her husband comes home early. She starves herself to death, asking to be buried in her wardrobe.
• The hen (Umberto Saba) - A 14 y.o rebellious boy (later to be a scholar) with a single mother starts work in a warehouse hoping to become a rich merchant. He had a pet hen when he was little, that was buried when it died. With his first wages he gets a hen delivered. We're told "I will now recount how and why he was unable to resist this temptation, and how cruelly he was subsequently punished". His mother kills and plucks the hen before he gets home. He realises that his mother doesn't understand him. Later he'll think that women don't understand him.
• The Lady (Lalla Romano) - A married woman at an alpine hotel is physically attracted by an older (40 y.o.) man. She has vaguely erotic dreams about him and is flustered when he talks to her. She dances with an 18 y.o. son of one of his friends. She discovers that unlike her, the man's right-wing. She's an artist, he makes shoes and only wants a marriage of convenience. She's not impressed. On a wagon ride he holds her hand to stop her falling, which is enough. Her husband calls her back home. (Typo: preceisly)
• The Tower (Fabrizia Ramondino) - Father, mother, daughter and cat stay at one of the father's houses in the Adriatic coast. The father comes from a once rich family. The husband had taught the wife how to drink heavily. She has a heavy period and a hangover. They run out of cash. She smokes waiting for a bus.
• The Trap (Luigi Pirandello) - The male narrator tries to repeatedly change appearance and personality - "All form is death". Stability is a death-trap. But caring women complicate the situation.
• Wedding Trip (Cesare Pavese) - I didn't know that he mentored Calvino. Cilia is dead. He'd treated her badly. They'd known each other for 2 years. He was a poor teacher. She loved him more than he loved her. When they went on a delayed mini-honeymoon to Genoa he spent the night walking alone.
• Melancholy (Goffredo Parise) - Silvia, 7, is at a summer camp run by nuns. Unlike the others there who are poor, she has her own clothes. She's brought up by her grandfather, a founder of the camp. She has a strong sense of smell. She feels different from the rest, sad. When she's collected at the end of summer, the nuns tell her grandfather that she's clever and melancholic.
• Silence (Aldo Palazzeschi) - Benedetto Vai, an elective mute, has been living for 20 years with housekeeper Leonora. She stayed even after his parents died because she loves him. He was excellent at school. Never had friends. He suddenly goes out and buys 12 glasses. Then plates, then cutlery. Suddenly ill he retires to his deathbed. Leonora lays the table. A blue-eyed ghost enters.
• A pair of eyeglasses (Anna Maria Ortese) - Don Peppani Quaglia and sickly wife Rosa are poor. They live in a courtyard of ramshackle houses owned by a religious Marchesa who asks them to do little jobs. They have 5 kids. Eugenia, the middle one, is very near-sighted. Peppani's sister Nunziata lives with them - bad tempered but she helps people. She orders expensive glasses for Eugenia. She's excited, tell people about them. When she tries them for the first time, she's sick - the shocking clarity, and the poverty.
• The other side of the moon (Alberto Moravia) - the narrator had been married 4 years to a judge with 2 kids. Bored, she drove a getaway car for a raid on the bank she worked at. She'd hoped to go off with the gangster. 6 months later she finds that he's bought a cosmetics shop. His wife's left him and he has 2 kids. She's no longer interested.
• The ambitious ones (Elsa Morante) - Angela, a widow, has 3 daughters. Cocetta is the eldest and prettiest. She turns down marriage to the son of a rich man and becomes a nun. She dies of typhus at 23. Her mother complains about the plain funeral.
• Sixteen, Twenty-one, Twenty-eight and Thirty-seven from Centuria (Giorgio Manganelli) - 4 short pieces. In the 3rd an emporer arrives in Cornwall. His 3 squires desert him. His philosphical menial doesn't. At the next elections the emporer will be a liberal candidate.
• Quaestio de Centauris (Primo Levy) - The narrator's father keeps a centaur. It can sense sexual activity nearby. It falls in love with Teresa. While it's at the blacksmith the narrator and Teresa make love. The centaur goes wild, molesting some mares before disappearing.
• Gogol's Wife (Tommaso Landolfi) - Gogol's wife was in fact an inflatable doll, adjustable to suit Gogol's changing tastes. Does the doll gradually acquire a self? She catches syphilis. He over-inflates her and she explodes.
• My husband (Natalia Ginzburg) - An early orphan, the narrator was raised by an old aunt. She married at 25 to a 31 year old doctor she hardly knew. He doesn't talk to her much, suggests they talk more. He says he was in love with a poor girl, Mariuccia, who he healed. He had supplied her with food and had regularly made love. The narrator has a child, which helps the couple bond. But he starts seeing the girl again. The narrator gets to know the girl a little. She has a 2nd child and tells her husband that she should move away. But he says Mariuccia is pregnant. Months later there's a knock on the door asking for the doctor - there are complications with the birth. The narrator sends a message to her husband and rushes to Mariuccia to help the midwife. The mother and baby die. The doctor arrives too late. He shoots himself.
• The mother (Carlo Emilio Gadda) - A mother whose son dies in war roams the dark house. There's a storm, a scorpion.
• A martian in Rome (Ennio Flaiano) - A human-looking martian lands. Why Rome? Will war and disease be over? His craft becomes a tourist attraction, the catholic church getting the money. Will he support the Right or the Left? He mixes with prostitutes. Is he gay?
• The smell of death (Beppe Fenoglio) - Carlo gets into a fight with Attilio because Attilio thought that Carlo was going for his girlfriend. She thanks Carlo for not hurting Attilio too much. But Attilio later dies.
• Life as a couple (Luce D'Eramo)- The woman doesn't think that it's worth her partner staying out late at meetings. He easily gets angry.
• The milliner (Antonio Delfini) - Elvira, 60+, thinks back to her past lovers. Arturo paid for her shop. He left suddenly and she had to close her shop.
• The hind (Grazia Deledda) - [Deledda won a Nobel prize]. Mulas, a boss, had a daughter who was set up for a good wedding until Mulas' wife was discovered having an affair. In old age he tries to befriend a shy hind. It creeps closer over the days. The servant says he killed her. Mulas shoots and wounds him. But the hind is alive, turning up with a stag. Mulas identifies the hind with his daughter.
• Invitation to dinner (Alba de Cespedes) - Lello returns, without warning, to his parents' home after war. He was helped by an English general, who he invites to a meal on his 2nd day back. The general says that Italians may have to wait years before other nations trust them. Italy will need help. The mother thinks this might be true but finds it condescending, and is surprised that a guest says such things. She notices that her husband's dressing standards have fallen.
• Elegy for signora Nodier (Silvio d'Arzo) - She married late to a general and moved away. He leaves for war. 7 months later he's dead. She becomes a bit of a recluse. She discusses his faults with an old flame of his. A fellow soldier returns his dog. She has it stuffed.
• Malpasso (Fausta Cialente) - An old man starts frequenting a bar in a beautiful town. His wife is notorious ugly and bad tempered. When questioned, he gradually reveals that she used to be beautiful and fun, but had a serious illness when 30. He's still in love with the young version, and the bar's clientelle come to think of her like that too. She enters the bar one day to tell people that he's been lying - she's always been bad tempered and ugly. He married her for her money. After she goes, he's sad. He'd begun to believe his lies. He becomes absorbed by the beauty of the landscape.
• At the Station (Carlo Cassola) - A mother is waiting for a train after visiting her newly wed daughter, Adriana. She's worried about how her husband is coping alone, and worried about why Adriana's husband is out so much. She doesn't want to be a burden, like her mother-in-law was. [according to the intro this "showcases his signature elements: limited characters, spare prose, charged emotional subtext"]
• The golden nut (Christina Campo) - a little girl tries to relate characters in a fairy tale to her relatives?
• Dialogue with a tortoise (Italo Calvino) - A philosphical discussion
• And yet they are knocking at your door (Dino Buzzati) - A well-off family play cards in their villa despite the storm warning. It's pitch black outside. Water appears in the room. Just a trickle says the mother. The domestic staff have deserted them. There are loud rumbles.
• The Miraculous Beach, or, Prize for Modesty (Massimo Bontempelli) - Nearly everybody flees Rome because of the heat. The narrator wants to stay. When his wife wants to buy a bathing suit he thinks she wants them to leave, but she just wants a suit. When she puts it on, their room becomes a beach. He gets his bathing suit.
• A geographical error (Romano Bilenchi) - A schoolboy is teased for coming from Maremma, though he doesn't. A travelling show from Maremma is a flop, which doesn't help.
• The streetwalker (Luciano Bianciardi) - A seller of old books goes to a whore when is wife is pregnant for the 4th time. When one brothel is shut down he uses another, weekly. He starts hiring a flat and bypassing the brothel-owner. He has an affair with a whore, Linda. He tried various other respectable options. It has a documentary feel - with arguments for and against the banning of brothels. At the end, while looking for streetwalker, his car is stolen. That means he can't take a whore to his car for sex, and hotel rooms cost too much. He has sex on the street and goes home to his expecting wife.
• Miss (Anna Banti) - a woman who at 23 was made to feel that she should marry, realised at 25, married, that "happiness extinguished intellect". She struggles to find balance and fulfilment.
• The baboon (Giovanni Arpino) - His 3 previous wives have died young. He's been with his current one 3 years. She's not good at cooking, but is loving and can do housework. She's a baboon. When they go together to the zoo, we realise that she wants a baby. That night she overdoses on sleeping pills.
• Barefoot (Corrado Alvaro) - He has to deal with cold callers - by phone and at his door. They say they'll try again later, but usually don't. Once a beautiful girl turned up with a child. He caught them stealing. They'd been stealing from other people in the block.

Other reviews

• Jonathan Gibbs
• Robert S Gordon (But against all odds, Jhumpa Lahiri has pulled off something quite striking here: a literary anthology that sparkles with invention and variety)
• onehundredpages (To be fair, a lot of the stories are a bit limp: the reader will wonder what they’re for, in what their merit consists, and what their authors are up to ... Stand out stories: ‘The Siren’ ... ‘Picturesque Lives’ ... ‘Quaestico de Centauris’ ... ‘Silence’ by Aldo Palazzeschi ... ‘Gogol’s Wife’ )