A novel in stories: With a wry sense of humor and a haunting sense of hope, Emmy, Peabody, and Humanitas Award winner Bob Brush weaves twenty-five charming stories into a compelling narrative of a community dancing on the tightrope of history.
On a tiny piazza in an obscure Italian hilltop town in 1933, magical things are happening. From the window of his mother's bakery a young boy, Niccol, sees it all: a pickpocket who purloins human emotions; a beggar who summons the voice of God from the town well; a blind silent-movie accompanist; two young lovers whose passion changes history. Over it all looms the onrushing shadow of fascism and Benito Mussolini. In The Piazza: Stories from Piazza Santa Caterina Piccola, citizens of this unexpected and improbable place find themselves bound together by their hopes, their lies, their humanity and their destiny, unbowed in the face of war and certain catastrophe.
Each of these interconnected stories can be read in twenty minutes or less. While each story can stand alone, taken together they present a heartwarming, heartbreaking, always funny, sometimes tragic, fantastical love song to a time and place that no longer exist - if in fact they ever existed at all.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: These stories were thirty years in the making, taken from scenes and characters I encountered on my travels throughout Italy. Read a story a day, on vacation or at bedtime. If you enjoy humor, romance, and a taste of the unexpected, I hope The Piazza will enchant you with the unique, eternal, and effervescent magic of Italy.
"The Piazza is a delight. These tales evoke the magic of Calvino's most beguiling works and the conscience-searing observations of Joyce's Dubliners. There's humor and wisdom in these stories, and beauty too, and - delivered so deftly you don't see it coming - the hard punch of history."
- Rachel Kadish, author of The Weight of Ink, winner of the National Jewish Book Award and the John Gardner Fiction Award