Heart Conditions

Sentimental Adventures in Turn-of-the-Century Italy (Kazabo Publishing)

Matilde Serao is "simpatica"! -- The Speaker

In this sparkling collection of short stories, Matilde Serao writes of love and romance as if she were Barbara Cartland's older, crankier -- and often much funnier -- sister. These stories turn many of the standard romantic clichés upside down with sometimes tragic, sometimes comic, but always unexpected, results. After an evening with Matilde Serao, you will never look at romance quite the same way!

Matilde Serao was a giant of early 20th century Italian literature as well as a pioneer. She was a journalist -- she ran her own newspaper for several years -- and an accomplished novelist and short story writer who was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature six times.

Serao was also a genuine character. Edith Wharton described her like this, "With her strident dress and intonation, she seemed an incongruous figure in that drawing-room where everything was in half-shades and semi-tones, but when she began to speak we had found our master."

These short stories, while immensely popular in Italy and France for over a hundred years, appear here in English for the very first time.