The Outcast

Luigi Pirandello, Bradford A. Masoni, Daniela Bini

From Shelf: New in hardback fiction this week!

A tale of false accusations, social stigma, and adultery, The Outcast is an early masterwork from Nobel Prize-winning Italian author Luigi Pirandello. Combining elements of Zolaesque naturalism with emerging modernist aesthetics, the novel is notable for its deft use of irony and its resourceful and resilient heroine.

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.

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