Matilde Serao

A composite crowd, without distinction of sex, wealth, or social standing, gathers awaiting the lottery draw. That morning they feel > the need to eat, to drink, to smoke, feeding vividly on visions of Cockaigne in their imagination, dreaming (...) of a whole bellyful of rich, fatty feasts, devoured in imagination . While the Neapolitan populace, anxious, overexcited, deluded, follows the dra

The book is a collection of short stories published by a very young Matilde Serao at the age of twenty-two. In 1883, the twenty-six-year-old author, after "four years of militant artistic life," wished she could "change everything," finding these juvenile writings flawed in form, lacking "depth of impressions," and muddled by an "encumbrance of ideas." Reading them more than a century later, thi