As Anna Maria Ortese has passed into her eighties her career in its entirety has begun to come into critical focus. Since the mid 1980s Ortese's work has increasingly received the respect of Italian critics, making up, perhaps, for the insufficient attention devoted to her work in the past. Her more complex texts, which deserve the analyses of modern critical theorists, have only begun to receive their due. Ortese is the antithesis of the literary personality who gathers a swarm of admirers by expressing socially correct (or incorrect) positions for the newspapers. She is a recluse who has chosen to live her life in work and solitude. Ortese's profound desire to shun personal attention-for example, her demanding that her friends not present her for the 1993 Campiello Prize-has no doubt contributed to her critical neglect; nevertheless, her work has earned an important place in Italian literature. Her style is...