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In my undergraduate days, when I first took a course in Italian literature, the authors whose names I was familiar with were Boccacio, Dante, Verga, D'Annunzio and Pirandello. Like most other students in the class, I had never heard of Grazia Deledda. One of her stories was included in the anthology assigned for the course. It was a simple story of a homeless mongrel that accepts food from anyone, yet manages to retain his integrity, remaining his own master. Of all the selections we read in that class that one haunted me for years afterward. Recently while browsing through paperback books on sale in the Rizzoli bookstore on Fifth Avenue, I came across some novels by Grazia Deledda. I bought them out of curiosity and a nostalgic anti? cipation of pleasure. I wasn't disappointed. It was not just that I could read her prose with ease. I responded intuitively to her characters, their emotions, their attitudes. I understood these people; I felt like one of them. Grazia Deledda was born in Nuoro, Sardinia, in 1871. Her first novel Stella dVriente was published in 1890 under the pseudonym Ilia di SantTsmael. Although she had little formal education, she read widely and avidly. Some of the Italian writers who influenced her were Verga, D'Annunzio, and Fogazzaro. Authors of the French school of realism: Flaubert, Zola, and Maupassant also played a part in her literary development, as did Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. There is a brooding passionate quality about Deledda1 s novels. Her descrip
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