Home of The Naughty Stories Series
Young English teacher Julia arrives in a vibrant Southern Italian city where she takes up with happy-go-lucky street seller, Cofi. When Cofi is caught up in a smuggling ring, the question of her own future arises. But as the half days stretch into the summer nights, the future is forgotten in a round of carnival pleasures.
The trattoria was a small family affair, tucked away in the shade of a narrow lane in the old Jewish quarter. I sat down at a table on the pavement and ordered pasta with clams. The padrone brought me a carafe of white wine. For the second course I ordered frittura, little baby octopus fried …
I frutti proibiti sono sempre i piu dolci. Forbidden fruit is always sweetest. – Italian proverb Julia was touched. By chance they had found out that it was her birthday. Patrizia’s cousins and friends arrived. The chairs had been pushed aside and the tables laid out as a buffet with an abundance of Southern Italian …
In the first block of flats where I lived for two months while everything else was arranged or, as they like to put it here, sistemato, was a wonderful old gated lift. The lift had wooden panelling and glass windows decorated with deco motifs. At the back of the lift there was even a little …
The impresario, Tony di Curtis was sitting in his office with a cigar in his hand when he turned to Katarina and anyone else who cared to listen to him (since the door was half open and an act was pacing outside) trumpeting his desire to learn English from a real Englishman. “By the way,” …
Sario was the eternal student; at thirty-five he still lived at home. Officially he was at work on his thesis which was rather grandly entitled “Upon Nationalization and the post-war Italian economy” but, if truth were known, he wasn’t doing anything very much except hanging out with Gavin. When Gavin went to the Maltese, Dario …
There is no bombast, no similes, flowers, digressions, or unnecessary descriptions. Everything tends towards catastrophe. Castle of Otranto, H. Walpole “Here in the south, as I am sure you know,” said the priest, who was a little, pink-faced gnome of a man with thick-rimmed glasses, “we have an expression: Mamma li turchi! One tells it …
The school used to give us a cheque, every month, to cash in the Banca Commerciale. By the end of the month I was always a bit short of cash. Although I kept something back in an envelope that slotted into the upright desk in my room (I trusted Katarina and Amelia implicitly), that month …
I can never really relax beforehand; I am always looking round for something to do, even if I will invariably end up winging it; when my tax card came in the post that morning, I thought I had found the perfect conversation piece. “It’s been the running joke of my life here,” I said at …
Sabi had been away on business in the north. When she got to Raff’s place, he was out, so she phoned him on his mobile. “Where are you, amore?” “At the Poly. – Where are you?” “Sitting on your bed.” “With or without your undies?” “Porco, when are you coming home?” Sabi hung up. As …
Like most young professionals, Roberta owned a motorino. If there was nothing special or flash about it, it was the sort of little motorbike that could get you from A to B. Though she did not have much affection for it, she was attached to it for practical reasons and always made a point of …