Modern-day Naples is a city teeming with contradictions, a chaotic metropolis in which modernity collides with history, a frenetic port city whose inhabitants are as volatile and as contrary as the city itself. From this rough mix Valeria Parrella has drawn the four exceptional novellas that comprise For Grace Received. Here is a portrait of a Naples spanning past and present: the end of the era of tobacco smuggling and the unrestrained spread of hard drugs; the vivacity of the traditional extended family and the crushing solitude of countless anonymous loners; the fortitude of young men and women forced to make ends meet while their parents serve time, and the long, hard haul of single mothers as they attempt to bring up their kids amidst violence and despair. In Valeria Parrella's Naples, life, love and happiness must all be pursued with passion, or not at all.

The stories in this collection represent some of the finest short fiction to have emerged from Italy in recent years. Winner of the 2005 Renato Fusini Prize, the 2006 Zerilli-Marimò Prize, and among the finalists for Italy's most prestigious literary award, The Strega, For Grace Received announces the English debut of a remarkable new literary talent.