Piero Chiara is among the most popular Italian novelists of the post-World War II period. His stories and novels are widely read and have been adapted for television and film. Although Chiara began to write in a society that was struggling to rebuild from the ruins of war and that still remembered the evils of dictatorship, his focus was never on the grand events of history. Instead, Chiara depicts the individual's personal concerns and situations. His readers recognize themselves and their world in his writing and identify with the situations he depicts. Yet his stories of ordinary lives in small towns can capture the whole society. He has won more than a dozen literary prizes, including the Campiello in 1964 and the Bancarella in 1979. In addition to fiction Chiara has worked in cinema, literary criticism, and art history. As a literary critic he has gained an international reputation for...