This is a collection of short stories and other snippets. The racial laws of 1938 have separated Bruno Lattes, a minor character from The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, from the Catholic girl he loved, and he tries to renew their friendship. Orthodox, Eastern European Jews flee to Ferrara. The narrator meets some of the privileged young men from his youth: they had such plans, but they stayed in Ferrara living the lives they swore they would escape. Behind every story is the fate of the Jews of Ferrara. In 1942-1943, all the remaining Jews in Ferrara, over a hundred, were sent to Germany and only one survived. ( )

This book was a random find in a London secondhand book market last summer. I didn't realised that I'd picked up the sixth and last book in the series 'The Novel of Ferrara', but I don't think it mattered; the four novels in the middle are bookended by 2 books of short stories, and this concluded collection of stories worked independently, although I believe some of the characters were from earlier books.

The Novel of Ferrara was the great work of Bassani's life. An Italian Jew, this set of work is set in the Jewish-Italian community of Ferrara during the late 1930s, the very town Bassani himself grew up in. A frustrated perfectionist, Bassani spent 20 years from the 1950s to the 1970s reworking and reediting the six books over and over. Even up to his death in 2000, he continued to publish different editions of the work.

The Smell of Hay is a very slim volume of stories which received much criticism initially. The earlier works are apparently much darker in form; these stories were generally quite light-hearted, despite skimming around dark themes such as the introduction of the Racial Laws in Italy, and were considered by many to be lacking in comparison to his earlier work.

True, there's little in this collection that I'll remember for too long, but Bassani's writing quality was really evident as I was reading each story. Many parts of his prose demanded to be read again and rolled around the tongue - he really had a quite beautiful turn of phrase, and often with short stories it's difficult to be as impactful as you can in a novel.

The pre-war period in Italy was very interesting to me; I've not read many novels set around this period in Italy, and from a social history perspective it was fascinating. I also thought the lightness of touch was clever. Bassani could have disappeared down the rabbit hole of the racial discrimination happening, but instead he often takes the perspective of a young person at that time, where the distractions of regular life are still prevalent, like trying to get back with an old girlfriend who's no longer interested.

4 stars - an interesting taster of Bassani's writing. I think The Novel of Ferrara will have to be a future reading project. I really enjoyed Ali Smith's introduction to the book too; usually I skip these, but the backstory of Bassani and this series of books is hugely interesting. ( )

Het laatste deel van de 6 boeken van Bassani die in het nederlands zijn vertaald. Ook dit boek bevat weer een aantal prachtige vertellingen, samen met een uitleg van de schrijver waarom hij zo moeilijk tot het schrijven komt. ( )

Bassani's "The Garden of the Finzi-Continis" is one of my favourite novels, and since finding out it is part of a larger cycle "Il romanzo di Ferrara", I have wanted to read the rest. This short volume of stories is the concluding part, and seems slight by comparison but still well-written and shedding new light on the author, his home city and his life. ( )