Great Italian Short Stories of the Twentieth Century / I grandi racconti italiani del Novecento: A Dual-Language Book (Dover Dual Language Italian)

This is a good book for some practice, but be aware some of the stories are obviously written in dialects, which is not modern Italian. The way I have been using the book is when I come across a word I do not know, I search online for the translation rather than use the books translation to add to my learning.

It was a gift for friend who had just finished level 10 of Duo Lingo; she loved it!

This is a great format for my study of Italian -- I can read real, serious examples of the language at its best, and check over when I'm unfamiliar with a word or phrase (which is all the time). I'm copying some of the stories out by hand to get the language really in my head. I like this format and hope they come out with more of them -- Calvino's novels would be terrific to read this way.

So far so good! If you’re learning Italian, it’ll give you some great context of how the language comes together!

Good for beginners

If you are a reader then this book is very helpful in learning Italian. Great stories by superb writers. Easy to go back and forth in both languages. Gets you to think in Italian much faster than expected.

This book was a disappointment because the stories were so dated, most from the first half of the 20th century. The stories, the ambience, the language, the things described all felt so old and out of date. I much would have preferred more recent stories.

Arrived on time. Excellent book. This book will be a continuing challenge and joy for me. Thank you!

I consider myself well educated but I can barely understand some of these stories or passages in English, never mind Italian. These are dreadfully dull and uninspiring stories and much of the language and vocabulary archaic and is of little use for modern or spoken Italian. I can't think who this is aimed for. Possibly fairly high level Italian learners but for me each story feels like a complete waste of effort. I haven't found a story that interests me in the least. If you like cryptic and vague narrative or meandering philosophical writing, this may be just what you need. Or not.

This book was bought for a gift for a friend who is learning Italian and who finds reading Italian alone difficult.

Wonderful.

Great gift for a friend studying Italian

This book contains a good selection of stories and the translations are good, however I still had to look up words as sometimes the translation did not make sense to me. I consider my knowledge of italian as fair and this book did help add a few words to my italian vocabulary.