Antonio Tabucchi 
Little Misunderstandings of No Importance 

The eleven short stories in this prize-winning collection pivot on life’s ambiguities and the central question they pose in Tabucchi’s fiction: is it choice, fate, accident, or even, occasionally, a kind of magic that plays the decisive role in the protagonists’ lives?

The eleven short stories in this prize-winning collection pivot on life’s ambiguities and the central question they pose in Tabucchi’s fiction: is it choice, fate, accident, or even, occasionally, a kind of magic that plays the decisive role in the protagonists’ lives? Blended with the author’s wonderfully intelligent imagination is his compassionate perception of elemental aspects of the human experience, be it grief as in ‘Waiting for Winter, ‘ about the widow of a nation’s literary lion, or madcap adventure as in ‘The Riddle, ‘ about a mysterious lady and a trip in Proust’s Bugatti Royale.

Circa l’autore

Frances Frenaye (1908–1996) was an American translator of French and Italian literary works. She worked at the Italian Cultural Institute from 1963 to 1980 and was responsible for editing its newsletter. She won the Denyse Clairouin Memorial Award (1951) for her translation from French to English of Georges Blond’s The Plunderers and J.H.R. Lenormand’s Renee. She also wrote for an Italian newspaper,  Il Mondo, for some time. Frenaye graduated from Bryn Mawr College and spent 50 years living in Manhattan before dying in Miami Beach.