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In Italy, as in most Western cultures, the 1960s was a dynamic and turbulent decade of social change. Dacia Maraini, in this short story collection, explores the vexing, tragic, and often humorous experiences of women living in modern urban Italy.

With a style as lean as Samuel Beckett's, and a love of the absurd that rivals Eug ne Ionesco, Maraini's stories are both poignant and wickedly funny. The writer's ironic lens zooms in to examining sexual relations, working conditions, women's issues, and family dynamics, illuminating the lives of an entire generation. With classic existential angst, Maraini's characters are often profoundly dissatisfied with their situations, but also ill-equipped to initiate any real change. This feminist version of the absurd is deliciously wry and terrible. The stories have a real bite.

Originally published as Mio marito in 1968, this is the first English translation of My Husband.

Vera Golini emigrated with her family to Canada from Abruzzo in 1956. She has been a professor of Italian studies at St. Jerome's University since 1975, and since 1997 has also directed the Women's Studies program at the University of Waterloo. She is currently president of the Canadian Society for Italian Studies.

Dacia Maraini was born in Florence in 1936. Her father's profession as an anthropologist and his antifascist stance led the family to emigrate to Japan where, during the war, they were confined for two years in concentration camps. In 1945 the family returned to Sicily and, when her parents separated in 1954, Dacia moved to Rome with her father.

Maraini's first two novels, La vacanza (The Holiday) and L'età del malessere (The Age of Indifference), published when she was twenty-six and twenty-seven, were instant international successes: the latter received the editors' international Formentor prize and was instantly translated into twelve languages. In 1990 Maraini sealed her international success with the publication of the novel La lunga vita di Marianna Ucrìa (The Silent Duchess, Feminist Press, 1992) which stayed on Italy's bestseller list for almost two years and won the prestigious Premio Campiello (Italy's equivalent of the us National Book Award). It was published to critical acclaim in fourteen languages.

Several of her books have been made into films, and Maraini has also written screenplays for directors like Pier Paolo Pasolini, Carlo di Palma, and Margarethe Von Trotta. She is a prolific writer with more than fifty publications of novels, poetry, and plays. She lives in Rome, actively promoting theatre groups, playing a very active role in the literary scene, and speaking on tv and in national newspapers and magazines on the evolving economic and social conditions of Italian and European women.