The boss had told us at a meeting which was tense and to the point.
“You will have heard...ahem, times being what they are...ahem...we are facing challenging times...”, and so on.
Communication had never been Barzetti’s strong suit, but we considered him ...

Silvia is seated on the settle, watching the rain outside the window. She is lost in thought, distant. Since her return she has been trying in every way possible to tell her mother the story she doesn’t want to hear. Rosa is pottering about the fireplace, stoking the ...

For Elsa and Tony

Ring the bells that still can ring.
Forget your perfect offering.
There is a crack in everything.
That's how the light gets in.
Leonard Cohen

The English trains proceed along the tracks in an ...

“Ciccio! How big you are?” Ciccio is forty years old and his name is not actually “Ciccio”: it might well be Gianluca, or perhaps Gianfranco, but anyway, he has always been Ciccio, to the world at large. Which world? The truth is simple: Ciccio’s home has been a ...

He was sitting at the corner of the street, on a rush-seat chair propped up against the wall of a house. It was very early, but already little splashes of sunlight dotted the grey of the pavement, and were radiating cautiously outwards. Soon they would reach his legs ...