Except the names of characters and places and few roman words ,the translation seems to be an original English work. The stories are short so that one can read each one in a few minutes and delve for a while since every story is different in its content that says about the characters,the ways and means of their living, their thought process and the result of their reflecting actions. The stories are about simple humans whose living is similar to common people around the world. I wondered they resembled Telugu stories, for Telugu being my mother tongue, the very living styles of the characters and the circumstances barring the advances and the freedom of feminine characters. I like 'The Baby' the most among all. The language is simple but quite expressive, the style racy and the narration picturesque. If permitted I would like to translate some of the stories into Telugu.

Expertly translated from the original Italian by Arthur K. Bierman, Sealed In Stone is the English-language rendition of Anno 1424, a haunting and dramatic novel by Toni Maraini. Set during the Hundred Years' War and based on the historical figure of Alix la Bourgotte, Sealed In Stone is the story of a young Parisian recluse who lives within a cell located in the wall of the Cemetery of the Holy Innocents and observes a boisterous, turbulent, and dangerous world of thieves, scoundrels, rebels, intellectuals, heretics, and pilgrims. Enhanced with an introduction by Alberto Moaravia, Sealed In Stone is very strongly recommended, literate and dramatic story of love, passion, and death amidst a bygone world of violence and change.

This is one of the best travel diary ever written--ranking up there with other master travel diaries, such as "The Narrow Road to the Deep North" by the 17th century Japanese poet Matsuo Basho. No other book has so deeply searched for the answers and meanings to the questions of Africa and its peoples. Everyone knows that Alberto Moravia was Italy's greatest writer in the 20th century, writing such novels like A Ghost At Noon, The Conformist, and The Fancy Dress Party. In this book Moravia has taken the resposibilty to make sense of the mess that is Africa, of its politics, its peoples' struggles, and most importantly, perhaps, of their obliviousness of it all, except of course, its effect.

This is one of the few instances that I have found in which the movie version of a novel is better than the novel itself. This is a contrived work through and through, and one can understand why Bertolucci completely changed the ending for the movie. Moravia here displays his utter sentimentality with an admixture of arm-chair psychology that is truly laughable....and this is probably his best novel.

This novel is fairly difficult to follow at times, but the entire story comes together at the end. You do not have to really be into Moravia's other novels to enjoy this one, but you do have to have some patience. The good parts of the novel are only made better by the rather dull beginning. Read it if you have some free time and you want to get a taste of Moravia's talent.

I tried watching the movie AFTER the book and I had NO patience with the movie, though directed by a person for whom I have great respect. Moravia is a lyricist and this prose poem of a novel describes some very hard facts of boyhood during fascist times in Italy, and more. The boy becomes a man, a conformist, due to an incredible mistake. And a mistaken mistake at that! Add to this an almost abusive father, who is institutionalized later in the novel, his lovely decadent drug addict mother with her 15 small dogs, and her chauffer, of course. A most harrowing, yet not disbeleivable, ending winds up the novel in just two pages. More from Moravia! Get this book back in print! For the scenes in the Paris clubs, it is alone worth reading this fascinating book. I read it two years ago and it has stayed with me, unlike many of my other favotite novels. This book is incomparable; it is not for the conformists, nor is it for the faint of heart!

I am a big fan of Moravia, but I consider this to be one of his worst novels. There are only 5 characters and the novel is 300+ pages long, which makes reading it sort of a bore. Not a complete failure, worthy of one star, but seems to be far inferior to everything else written by the author.

Five people of the Roman middle class interact in this novel. Mariagrazia Ardengo, the mother, will not give up her pretensions though financially ruined and without hope for the future. She has two children, both in their twenties. Carla, who is bored with her present life, wants to change it drastically and overnight. Michele, who shows the indifference of the book's title, cannot get aroused by anything or anybody. Lisa, the mother's friend, has sunk to the level of a fat, penniless tramp, searches desperately for somebody to love her - or to at least pretend it. And then there is Leo. Leo used to be the lover of Lisa, until Mariagrazia took him away from her. Leo is the source of their financial ruin. Leo has money. Leo wants something fresher, younger, unspoiled. Leo goes after Carla. And he succeeds. After Mariagrazia and Lisa spend their time fighting over Leo, they are now left out in the cold. Michele cannot be touched by any of this but hopes that, one of these days, he can get a real life.

Moravia started on this book when he was eighteen and it was published in 1929 when he was twenty-one. He did not have the life experience he so stunningly shows in his later work. I get the impression that he studied too much of the French literature of those times and tried to follow it. That makes this novel less than perfect and somewhat outdated.

A couple of excerpts:

"Dirty tricks, little acts of baseness, little falsities - who was there who did not collect such things in every corner of his existence, as though in the corners of some big empty house?"

"The pavements were crowded, the streets crammed with vehicles, for it was the busiest moment of the afternoon. With no umbrella against the rain, Michele walked slowly along as though it were a day of sunshine, looking idly at the shop windows, at the women, at the electric signs hanging in the darkness. But however hard he tried he could not manage to take any interest in the well-known spectacle of the street; the anguish that had taken possession of him, for no particular reason, as he walked away through the empty reception-rooms of the hotel, did not leave him; the image of himself as he really was and as he could not forget that he was, pursued him. He seemed to have a clear vision of himself - alone, wretched, indifferent."

Some people find this style of writing out-dated. But if you have ever felt this way yourself then Alberto Moravia, and this novel in particular, will come as a revelation. For me Michele is one of the great characters in fiction; bored, indifferent, unable to act, yet immensely sympathetic; a man desperate to believe in something, but trapped in a society where graft and corruption, and the money culture that inspires it, makes belief impossible. A lot like our own contemporary moment in fact.

Before the second war.A young italian man and a german womanbegan a sexual relationship that seems to be a swingers relation.Thaeslightly graffic relationship is not what it seems.The german woman makes the first moves in the surprising history.The best Moravia you can read.Shocking or surprising.You can also like "lúomo che guarda" END

Just before the second war ,an young italian man loking for his way in tha wordl what seems to be love with a german woman.It seems to be a swinger thing.She ,most of the time is the acting part in the sexual ,slightly gtraffic ,relationship.This clueless intelectual and antifacist man and his german lover will shock or surprise you.But you wont be dissapointed.One of the best Moravia you can read.You could also like "l'uomo che guarda",.Also" the country woman",taken to the screen with Sofia Loren

This is a splendid book. Short stories of Moravia are of totally different nature from most of the conventional short story writters like O'Henry or Gogol. Moravia deals with human relation - again not to the extent that it crosses the boundaries of relation and flows into the pshycological world of human feelings like Satre. He deals with the polemics of man and woman - mostly trying to manage through the grey background of their daily mandane matters. Little friction often is the source of firest fires destroying family or little frictions which die out after a small flash. What ever the case may be he dscribes it beautifully. Well translations have their own little problems but alas I never knew how to read Italian. All the stories have very small canvas and deal with few characters. Some stories are notable like "Insomnia Together" , "All Right" "Family Life". I have not given it full 5 stars as I feel the translations could have been better

only the best, it is the master piece of Moravia

Frankly this book brought Sticky to new depths of sadness and depression as Adriana (the titular Woman of Rome) abandoned all hope and care and sunk to prostitution and risotto. It is the latter which saddened Sticky the most, our protagonist creating ever more bland risottos with every turn of the page, and forsaking the sticky rice teachings of the kind Chinese laundry gentleman who ran the little laundry on the Via Di Consolazione.

A devastating read...

Moravia's elegant novel takes the familiar theme of unfulfilled dreams and invests it with quiet strength and descriptive authenticity. Months after reading "Woman in Rome," it is the voice of Adriana, the woman of the title, that lingers in my memory. By telling in the 1st person his story of a young woman whose beauty, poverty, passivity and kindness lead her to prostitution and abandonment, the author shows us how such a fall from hope and grace is a gradual, imperceptible process, one day after the next. Moravia writes in a deceptively simple style that keeps the reader close to his heroine's actions, so that her losses become our own. Near the end of the novel there is an astonishing paragraph, in which the narrator imagines herself drowning. This heartbreaking paragraph encapsulates the downward pull of the entire book, the longing for oblivion in the face of lost dreams. It is too long to quote in full, but here are some excerpts. (Note, too, the beautiful translation.)

"I obeyed and he undressed in the dark and got into bed beside me. I turned toward him to embrace him, but he pushed me away wordlessly and curled himself up on the edge of the bed with his back to me. This gesture filled me with bitterness and I, too, hunched myself up, waiting for sleep with a widowed spirit. But I began to think about the sea again and was overcome by the longing to drown myself. I imagined it would only be a moment's suffering, and then my lifeless body would float from wave to wave beneath the sky for ages. [...] At last I would sink to the bottom, would be dragged head downward toward some icy blue current that would carry me along the sea for months and years among submarine rocks, fish, and seaweed, and floods of limpid seawater would wash my forehead, my breast, my belly, my legs, slowly wearing away my flesh, smoothing and refining me continually. And at last some wave, someday, would cast me up on some beach, nothing but a handful of fragile, white bones [...] a little heap of bones, without human shape, among the clean stones of a shore."

Alberto Moravia was a leading mid-Twentieth Century Italian novelist and short story writer. Although his works were quickly translated into English, they were little read in the United States. Fortunately for interested readers, many of his books are now in print again and accessible, including his 1949 novel, The Woman of Rome.

This is a story of Adriana, a beautiful, poor, and uneducated young woman who begins as an artist's model at the age of 16. Although she dreams of a quiet, modest home with a loving husband and children, she becomes both a prostitute and a thief. As a prostitute, she is involved with a number of men with competing ideologies and interests including Astarita, a Fascist chief of police, Giacomo, a student revolutionary against the Fascists and Sozmogo, a criminal and a thug.

The story is told in the first person. Adriana is always on stage and the character of highest interest. The reader gets to know her well. The book is told in a linear, easy-to-follow style which builds to a large cresendo, for me, at the end of the first part. The second part of the book loses slightly in dramatic intensity and in construction.

As with any work of depth, this book functions on a number of levels which reject easy paraphrase or simple meaning. Many readers see the book as a picture of corruption in Rome while others see it more as the story of Adriana. I am more inclined to the second view. As far as I can tell, however, there is a strong spiritual theme in the book which sometimes gets too little emphasis in the pull of conflicting readings.

There are no less than four pivotal scenes in The Woman of Rome set in a church. Although the book is replete with sex, violence and raw brutality, it is also highly internalized. Many of its most effective moments are those in which Adriana relects (in church or out) on her life and on the course it has taken.

The German philosopher Frederich Nietxche (Adriana does not mention and would not have known of him) used the phrase "amor fati" to describe the wise person's attitude towards life. The phrase means loving one's destiny or, to use another related Nietschean phrase, "becoming who one is". The specific facts of one's life may be determined by circumstance. What is not determined is one's attitude. A person can understand his or her life and accept it joyfully, regardless of its state. It is in the acceptance and understanding that choice resides and that gives life its value and dignity.

The novel shows the attempt of a poor, but intelligent woman to find "amor fati" and to become who she is. She struggles to accept her nature and her being as a prostitute. Many of Adriana's reflections in the church are quite explicit and insightful. Adriana, alas, is no more successful than are most people in staying with her insight into herself. That, in my opinion, is the tragedy of the story which leads to the downfall of the men involved with Adriana.

The spiritual tone of the book goes well beyond Nietsche. Together with the theme of amor fati, there is a religiosity that emphasises, in the context of Western theology, God as merciful and as all-forgiving rather than God as a moralizer or judge. This God -- or self-understanding is open to all regardless of creed or station. The religion that seems to be espoused in the book recognizes the sinful, fallen nature of people and their frequent inability to change. It seems to suggest the possiblity of atonement and forgiveness offered to everyone by a turning of the heart, even if, perhaps, behavior cannot be changed. It is a powerful picture of a God of mercy and forgiveness who holds the possiblity of love out to all.

This is a first-rate or nearly first-rate Twentieth Century novel.