Fario: 74 books

The leading lady of a company of actors receives love letters from an unknown admirer. She and the oldest member of the company--the notary--continue to speculate about the admirer's identity even after it becomes clear who he is. Genre: short story Date of English translation: 2012

Baron Sigismundo de Kernoberg, a single Swede of thirty-nine, wedded to science alone, suddenly finds himself roped into giving botany lessons to a neighbor's lovely young niece. Translated from Portuguese (Brazil) by Juan LePuen Genre: theater (comedy in one act) Length: 6,900 words

"Our disagreement has a natural explanation. I am a single girl, full of complications, dreams, ambitions, and poetry; you are already a woman of the house, a calm and happy wife, soon to be a mother; you see things through a different lens." Raquel and her married friend Luísa exchange...

The sculptor Lodovico Bertini turns up on a mysterious errand at the school where a friend of his is teaching Greek. He has come, it turns out, to witness the arrival of a passenger liner, aboard which is a man whose imminent return to Italy is throwing Bertini's life into turmoil. Translated from Italian (2012) by Juan LePuen Genre: novel Length: 40,000 words

Author, printer, and libertine Rétif de la Bretonne ("the French pornographer") was among the most eccentric public figures of eighteenth-century France. Gérard de Nerval, drawn to such eccentrics, examines the life of the man whose work the 1911 Britannica deems "unfit for general...

The captain of the "Siracusa" has received orders to sail for Tangiers, where rebels have seized the Italian consulate. The blue peter is hoisted, and the sirens announcing the ship's departure echo off of the hills above Livorno. From all over the city, seamen and officers begin returning...

In the company of gentlemen: A gentleman bets a friend of his that he will be able to cow him into turning over his wallet before the evening is out. In an attempt to win his bet, he and another friend, Baron Squatti, enlist the help of their intended victim's manservant, Giovanni. "Reading...

Italo Svevo (1861-1928), born Aron Ettore Schmitz in Trieste, then in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, is most well known for his novel _La coscienza di Zeno_. His work for the theater is much less well known and has not, until now, been made widely available in English (translations of some of his plays...

"A lover is permitted to look for ways to please, and he must be forgiven when he succeeds." Dorante, a well-bred and handsome but penniless young businessman, takes a position as an administrator for a rich and beautiful widow. Translated from French (2012) by Juan LePuen Genre: theater (comedy) Length: 20,000 words

"People recall an abyss with pleasure; it is impossible to recall a bore without dread. Sooner the Tarpeian Rock than an author of ill repute."Genre: short storyLength: 1,500 wordsTranslated from Portuguese (Brazil) by Juan LePuen

The aging clerk Coimbra no longer believes in much. Not even his long-standing faith in the lottery--"I'm no longer of the age to hope," he admits--is entirely steadfast. He resolves, then, to buy one last ticket, for the drawing for the huge sum of five hundred contos.Translated from Portuguese (Brazil) by Juan LePuenGenre: short storyLength: 5,000 words

"I felt an acute pain in the top part of my skull; a foreign object went in to the inside of my brain. I know nothing else. I think I fainted. When I came to, the laboratory was empty. Father and daughter had disappeared. I had the impression there was a curtain in front of me. A loud and hoarse voice...

In "Trio in A Minor," Machado's classic tale of a love triangle in Brazilian high society, the intrigue plays out to the tune of the old sonata of the absolute. Brazil's Machado de Assis, the greatest Latin American novelist of the nineteenth century (1839-1908), also excelled...

Martinha, in her forties, finds herself alone. She has only the old aunt she lives with. One day, going through the mementos of her youth, she comes across a dried flower and reminisces about the circumstances in which, rare, beautiful, and fresh, it was given to her.Genre: short storyLength: 2,000 wordsTranslated from Portuguese (Brazil) by Juan LePuen