Cavalleria Rusticana

Giovanni Verga · 1840–1922 · Italy

Originally Cavalleria Rusticana (Italian)

Why it matters

A story collection of Sicilian honor, jealousy, and violence, its title tale of a fatal duel over a woman later became Mascagni's famous opera. Verga's dialect-inflected realism at its most compressed and brutal.

At a glance

Compressed, dialect-inflected prose that assumes rather than explains.