Helen Hester

Newly married, Regina and Antonio arrive in Rome, Antonio’s native city. They are very young and headstrong, full of the illusions of love. Regina must come to terms with Antonio’s vulgar family, as well as the sometimes gritty realities of this city she has dreamed of admiringly through a sheltered childhood in the valley of the Po.

Regina is beautiful, somewhat commanding, and aware of her higher social status, but she is also at a newcomer’s disadvantage in this city Antonio knows well. These circumstances, combined with her capricious youthful vigour, and Antonio’s uncomprehending stubbornness, make for a testing time in their lives, and lead to a subtle rupture, a sense of discord.

Antonio, crestfallen, makes a crucial private decision. Its exact nature eludes Regina, but she has strong suspicions. Her doubts begin to torture her. Can the two restore not only their accustomed life together, but find harmony within it? Will their vacillation and self-deceit make things worse? In the end, maturity in their relationship comes at enormous cost.

This intense and subtle novel traces the stormy passage of a marriage, balancing the comedic and the elegiac with an undertone of bitter melancholy. Grazia Deledda, in an extraordinary portrait of a relationship in which both partners endure much separate emotional suffering through their own frailties, creates a masterwork of psychological realism, touched with leavening humour and sadness.

Nostalgia was first published in Italian in 1905, and in this English translation later the same year.