The fetish, & other stories

by Alberto Moravia, Angus Davidson (Translator)

English, Italian (translation)

Genres: Fiction, Short Stories, Italian Literature

285 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1966

About the author

Alberto Moravia, born Alberto Pincherle, was one of the leading Italian novelists of the twentieth century whose novels explore matters of modern sexuality, social alienation, and existentialism. He was also a journalist, playwright, essayist and film critic.
Moravia was an atheist, his writing was marked by its factual, cold, precise style, often depicting the malaise of the bourgeoisie, underpinned by high social and cultural awareness. Moravia believed that writers must, if they were to represent reality, assume a moral position, a clearly conceived political, social, and philosophical attitude, but also that, ultimately, "A writer survives in spite of his beliefs".

Reviews

[Rob Christopher]

This is my second time reading this book and it's blowing my mind all over again. It's a pity that it isn't better-known. Each story is a perfect 4-8 page jewel, just long enough to get you to the payoff, Rod Serling-style.

[Edward Smith]

Alberto Moravia is the king o short stories, quick, to theorist and very well defined. Most of the stories are about relationships and the ebbs and flows that go along with familiarity.

This book is a treasure.

[Samir Rawas Sarayji]

DNF. It’s hard after so many vignettes to stay interested in more of the same. They’re just too short to really resonate. Unlike his novels that can dissect the anatomy of a relationship and/or lust, these fell flat.

[Daniel Polansky]

Post-war Italians suffer existential breakdowns. Spare, clever and engaging.

[Zantaeus Glom]

Five effervescing stars all the way! Alberto Moravia's generous collection of wry, filigree stories is a truly sublime offering; replete with an extraordinarily thrilling and vivid galleria of disparate, full-bloodied characters, whose myriad domestic adventuring in suburbia are usually depicted in pristine and brutally humanistic prose. (His pitiless, bitter-sweet invocations of the male-female dynamic are, on occasion, breathtakingly accurate, and almost always terribly, terribly moving.) There are very few writers in any epoch who can express so much guile with such refined brevity. This stunningly lucid compendium is easily on par with the very best of Raymond Carver, as Alberto Moravia is undoubtedly a master literary craftsman who wields a most magnificently cogent pen. What Moravia does in witty precis, many other less gifted authors fail to achieve in their infinitely more cumbrous, plaudit-heavy tomes.

Moravia is my new literary sensei!

I shall recall many of these wholly beguiling tales for the rest of my life.

(If you are a writer I would STRONGLY recommend Moravia's work.)

[John King]

Moravia is a great short story writer. Most of his stores are about male-female love-hate relations, be it husbands vs wives, sons vs mothers, or lovers vs lovers. He is quick and to the point yet subtle in his analysis of the classic war and peace between the sexes. This wonderful collection.

[Terry]

The Fetish and Other Stories by Alberto Moravia (1967)