Behind Closed Doors

Ten stories of impoverished Sicilian women in the early 20th century—"honed, polished, devastatingly direct . . . verismo at its unsentimental best" (Kirkus Reviews). The Sicilian writer Maria Messina''s captivating and brutal stories of the women of her home island are presented in a "lyrical and immediate" English translation by Elise Magistro (Publishers Weekly). Messina, who died in 1944, was ...