Translated by Nicoletta Simborowski. ?This is Pirandello's third novel, published in 1904, and marks the start of a major theme in his work-the nature of identity. -The Sunday Times ?Pascal, a landowner fallen on hard times and trapped in a miserable marriage, runs away from home and wins a lot of money at the gaming tables in Monte Carlo. Meanwhile a body has been found in the millrace of his village and it is assumed that Pascal has killed himself. Seizing what looks like a chance to create a new life, he travels to Rome under an assumed name and struggles to invent a different identity, which he can inhabit. He fails, returns home, finds his wife has remarried and has to act out a the role of being as it were a living ghost. All these tragic events are recounted with verve and wit and comes across clearly Simborowski's spirited translation from the Italian.? -Robert Nye in The Guardian AUTHOR: Luigi Pirandello (1867-1936) was born in Sicily to a prosperous middle-class family. After his studies he devoted himself to literary pursuits and published poetry, short stories, a novel and plays. The bankruptcy of his father in 1903 drastically altered his life. His wife became ill both mentally and physically and he contemplated committing suicide. It is against this background that he wrote The Late Mattia Pascal in 1904 which is seen as the beginning of all that is most interesting in his work. It was an immediate success in Italy and abroad and helped him become a well-known literary figure. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1934.
