The stories collected in Under the Shadow of Etna are drawn from the
Sicily of Giovanni Verga's childhood, reported at the time to be the
poorest place in Europe. Verga's style is swift, sure, and implacable;
he plunges into his stories almost in midbreath, and tells them with a
stark economy of words. There's something dark and tightly coiled at the
heart of each story, an ironic, bitter resolution that is belied by the
deceptive simplicity of Verga's prose, and Verga strikes just when the
reader's not expecting it.