If the Moon Brings Me Luck

The works of Italian prose writer and playwright Achille Campanile (1900–1977) are popular on the stage, but his paradoxical prose is known to Russian-speaking readers only through a few stories. In 1973, Campanile received the Viareggio Prize for his collection of short prose “Manual for Conversation.” His plots cannot be called realistic, and the actions of his characters are far from always subject to logic and common sense. Often the motivation of his heroes can only be called idiotic. The two most famous novels of this master of the absurd appear in Russian for the first time.