Giovanni Verga 
The House by the Medlar Tree 

Giovanni Verga (1840-1922) is the most important of the Italian Realist School of novelists. This new edition of
The House by the Medlar Tree (I Malavoglia) makes the complete English version of his masterpiece available once more. The story of the Malavoglia, a family of poor Sicilian fisherman, is Verga’s moving rendering of the theme of mankind’s struggle for self-betterment, the dignity of the struggle in the face of poverty and hardship, and the tragedy that the struggle inevitably incurs.


D. H. Lawrence described Vega’s work as ‘Homeric.’ Rayond Rosenthal’s translation of
I Malavoglia is the only complete version of this novel in English and conveys Vega’s lyrical realism and the flavor of Sicialian village life superbly.


The book is introduced by Giovanni Ceccheti, whose own translations of Verga,
Mastro-don Gesualdo and
The She-Wolf and Other Stories, are also available from California.


This title is part of UC Press’s Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1984.

Giovanni Verga (1840-1922) is the most important of the Italian Realist School of novelists. This new edition of
The House by the Medlar Tree (I Malavoglia) makes the complete English version of his masterpiece available once more. The story of the