Luigi PirandelloLuigi Pirandello (1867-1936) was an Italian novelist, short- story writer, and playwright. His best-known works include the novel 'The Late Mattia Pascal', in which the narrator one day discovers that he has been declared dead, as well as the groundbeaking plays Six Characters in Search of an Author and Henry IV, which prefigured the Theater of the Absurd. In 1926, Pirandello published 'One, No One, and One Hundred Thousand', which he had been writing for the previous seventeen years. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1934. William Weaver (1923-2013) was a renowned translator who brought some of the most interesting Italian works into English. He translated Italo Calvino, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Italo Svevo, Umberto Eco, Alberto Moravia, and Elsa Morante, to name just a few, as well as Pirandello's The Late Mattia Pascal. An expert on opera, Weaver lived for many years in a farmhouse in Tuscany and later became a professor of literature at Bard College. Read More Read Less