With Stories and Recollections, the short prose works of the great Italian poet Umberto Saba, 1883-1957, make their first appearance in English. Here are the stories, memoirs, and reflections of a poet who sent much of his life in his small antiquarian bookshop. This work is largely overlooked but for friends such as Svevo, Montale, Pavese, Ungaretti and Carlo Levi, who found Saba's 'rich and complex prose of such scrupulous realism that it recalls Goethe or Thomas Mann, but it is so much more brilliant modern and nervous.'

The Stories and Recollections of Umberto Saba is a revelation: In its apparent simplicity, its moral sense, its understanding, and, most of all, its quiet beauty, it is a true companion piece to the work of his fellow Triestan Italo Svevo, who one would have though sui generis.

Estelle Gilson's distinguished translation of the Italian prose stylist won the PEN Renato Poggioli Translation Award for 1992 and the Italo Calvino Award of The Translation Cenre at Columbia UNiversity in 1991.