Hauntingly beautiful fiction about two women, solitude, art, and transformation.For years, Gioia Timpanelli has held audiences rapt with her retellings of ancient tales, often appearing with Robert Bly, James Hillman, Joseph Campbell, and Gary Snyder. Here, in fiction full of warmth and resonances--characters we can't help but recognize, prose and imagery that play on the strings of the soul--Timpanelli draws on her deep knowledge of these old stories and their wis...

A luminous story of danger and survival.In a timeless moment in rural Sicily, a boy experiences the brutal killing of his best friend and is kidnapped by the murderers. No child should have to know evil so intimately, and yet once he does, what will save him?His salvation lies in the cycles of the seasons, the sturdy earth and its gifts of lentils and wild asparagus in a time of starvation, the animal sense that enables one to anticipate the whims and impulses of o...

Si cunta e si ricunta—“It is told and retold”—begin these rich and wondrous stories from Italy and Sicily. Weaving the golden thread of stories that connects magical worlds with our everyday lives, acclaimed storyteller Gioia Timpanelli shares the household rituals of a Sicilian family and turns mythic characters into our dear friends. Meet La Fortuna (Lady Luck), a princess with the power to heal, humorous folk characters, and neighbors on the streets of Brooklyn. People of exceptional wi...

This book is addressed to “lovers of paradoxes” and we have done our utmost to assemble a stellar cast of Neapolitan and American scholars, intellectuals, and artists/writers who are strong and open-minded enough to wrestle with and illuminate the paradoxes through which Naples presents itself. Naples is a mysterious metropolis. Difficult to understand, it is an enigma to outsiders, and also to the Neapolitans themselves. Its very impenetrableness is what makes it so deliriously and irresi...