Customer Reviews

Eleven Short Stories/Undici Novelle (A Dual-Language Book) (English and Italian Edition)

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Yeah, its fun to study this way, and you will not even realize how much italian you have learned until you go back to read the book again or go read another book in italian and you will be like "Holy cow I can understand some of this"...I am reading this book for a second time now...my feelings on the actual stories themselves is really kinda hit or miss...some of them I thought were really cool, like Una Voce, it is a story about a blind man who is engaged to this woman. A doctor thinks he can cure the man's blindness. What happens? You have to read to find out but it was very interesting (Yeah I know it sounds like that movie with Val Kilmer but trust me, it's different). But honestly, for a lot of the other stories I was like please let this end. Maybe something was lost in the translation, and I'm not fluent in Italian, but Pirandello reminds me of a guy who takes 2 hours to set up a joke and then has no punchline. He writes like at the end there is going to be some really big catch like "Woah I can't believe this happened!" but then he just ends it before that catch ever takes place. So I guess what I am trying to say
is that this book is a great tool for learning italian, I just didn't find most of the stories very interesting. Still, I am glad I bought it. I thought "Italian Stories" were a lot more interesting. Yeah, I know Pirandello is real famous and people love his stuff, I'm just saying that I didn't particularly like it.

This book is a great version of these classic tales. Being a dual-language text makes it an excellent aid to Italian language study. It is a must-read for lovers of Italian literature.

In my opinion, if you can read this book in Italian, you are an advanced student. If you can read the English side, you are probably reading at a college level.

Here is a sentence from the first page: "La bimba andava sbadatamente, ed ecco ... diradandosi a poco a poco una piccola collina che a destra s'innalzava le si sciorina davanti allo sguardo l'immensità delle acque del mare."

If you can't read that, don't buy the book.

This book has a lot of long sentences, 20 word sentences are common. It also has a large vocabulary. Words repeat infrequently so reading didn't get easier as the story continued. Also, some of the words weren't in my 15,000-word dictionary.

If you're already comfortable reading Italian, you might find this book useful, otherwise look somewhere else.

Outstanding book for the intermediate Italian student. Put together well.

I rated it thee stars because I didn't like the stories much. Unsatisfactory endings for me, some dumb stories. But it is ok, especially as a review or if you want to improve your Italian further after reading better dual language books. I'm usually please (and I am with this one) with almost any dual language book, even if I don't like the stories or translations, because for me the books are to improve my knowledge of the foreign language. But some books are boring, dumb, and otherwise less desireable than those better written and interesting.

Luigi Pirandello, the 1934 Nobel laureate for literature,created some delightful and surprising short stories of the southern regions of Italy.
Supported by a careful English translation on the opposite pages it is possible for the intermediate level student of Italian to get a taste of real literature.
Because of Pirandello's place in the literary world, this book should be added to every student's library.

Both the syntax and the vocabulary are well beyond the needs of anyone hoping to converse comfortably with living, breathing Italians, short of the intelligentsia. Pirandello's descriptive language was choicely flamboyant and sonorous, especially in his early stories, and the pleasure of reading those stories comes more from the style than from the content. I can read Pirandello's plays in Italian easily enough, and better yet I can usually follow them on stage. So why would I want a Dual-Language edition? Here's why:

""Il cameriere, ancora in miniche di camicia, ma già impiccato in un altissimo colletto, coi radi capelli ben lisciati e disposti sul cranio, inarcando le folte ciglia giunte che parevan due baffi spostati, rasi dal labbro e appiccicati lì per non perderli, squadrò da capo ai piedi di giovanotto che gli stava sul pianerottolo della scala: campagnolo all'aspetto, col bavero del pastrano ruvido rialzato fin su gli orrechi e le mani paonazze. grocnchie dal freddo, che reggevano un sacchetto sudicio di qua, una vecchia valigetta di là, a contrappeso.

Yes, that is all one sentence, and yes, I can decipher the sense of it without much grief, and yes, the five words I'd never encountered before are all somewhat archaic, the sort of words one has to slide past in any 19th C English novel ... so, if you can handle that sentence, you certainly don't NEED this dual-language crutch. On the other hand, it's cheap, it's an interesting selection of eleven stories, and once in a while, when your brain boggles at prolixity, it's convenient.

There is a little bit of a chicken-or-egg paradox in reviewing a book such as this, in that I would probably have to be at a more advanced level of Italian study than the level of the book, in order to really appraise it properly. As it is, with the book representing a learning tool, I have to assume that the translator is accurate in his efforts. Indeed, where I know the proper Italian and English, it appears to be correct, thus I am giving 4 stars. The stories are slightly uninteresting to me, but the primary focus of the book is for learning the language, not reading stories, and on that count, it seems to be quite good.

If you're quite good at Italian then this is the last step before tackling original Italian texts on your own. The side by side translation helps build confidence and enables you to briefly check if you understand properly or to help you when you really can't work out the meaning.

If you've managed the texts in this book all right I'd recommend some easier original text to take you further such as La Perla Sanguinosa (Italian Edition); see my list 'Great Italian Books'.

An effective method of supplementing your Italian lessons. The English translation allows speedy cross referencing without interrupting fluency. Learning new words by context is effective, and this format of narrative allows that.