My Husband

Carol A. Stos is an assistant professor of Spanish Studies at Laurentian
University.

Originally published in 1968 as Mio Marito, this collection of 17 short
stories offers a compelling, often disturbing vision of the lives of
women in urban Italy during the 1960s. Maraini explores, in a spare and
ironic style, fundamental feminist issues of gender roles, identity,
sexuality, and violence against women. Society’s collusion in the
oppression of women in working relationships, through the family
dynamic, and in sexual relations comes under her intense scrutiny.

While many of Maraini’s stories are dark and her characters come to a
tragic or absurd end, others are wickedly humorous, particularly those
in which she treads a fine line between the comic and the absurd. At all
times, we are aware of a powerful critique of the social, economic, and
political conditions that are both the backdrop to her characters’
lives and the forces that shape them. The stories in My Husband provide
us with a sense of what was happening to women (and men) in Italy during
a certain period of significant social and political change.

Importantly, this first appearance of these stories in English makes
more of Maraini’s work accessible to a broader audience. Vera
Golini’s translation is true to the spirit of the original,
reproducing its “sense and semblance” by replicating Maraini’s
nuanced and colloquial Italian language in a natural and accurate
fashion. But Golini offers us much more than a translation: she includes
a succinct critical introduction, a detailed afterword on Maraini’s
life and prose, a number of useful appendixes, and a critical
bibliography. Thus, this edition of My Husband will not only appeal to a
general reading public, but it will also provide invaluable assistance
to scholars and students interested in contemporary and comparative
literature, cultural studies, women’s studies, and feminism.