When Pulitzer Prize winner Jhumpa Lahiri decided to read exclusively in Italian, she discovered a rich literary world that remains too little known in the English speaking world. Appearing here in translation are 40 stories selected by Lahiri, including tales by Italo Calvino ("Dialogue with a Tortoise"), Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa ("The Siren"), Elsa Morante ("The Ambitious Ones"), Leonardo Sciascia ("The Long Voyage"), and Natalia Ginzburg ("My Husband"). Here too are contributions by Primo Levi, Luigi Pirandello, Italo Svevo, Alberto Moravia, Cesare Pavese, Giovanni Verga, Antonio Tabucchi, and Carlo Emilio Gadda.