CONTENTS

1) The Non- Camillo Books (Introduction)

2) Early Family Stories

3) Later Family Stories
- Introduction
.
- "The Pullover"
- "Passionaria..."
- "...All Began"
- "...Blackface"
- "Suspense"
- "Vacation..."
- "Ladies..."
- "Jo's Nose"

4) Drawing Room Farces

5) Notes from Prison Camp

For the record, the last book by Giovanni Guareschi to find its way into English translation was not a Don Camillo book. Instead, it was The Family Guareschi, the third collection of humorous stories about the author's never-dull household, that constituted GG's last word to his English-language readership.  The book came out in 1970, having been preceded by the also-posthumous Don Camillo Meets the Flower Children in 1969; and, like its immediate predecessor, The Family Guareschi allows us a final glimpse of some familiar characters "a few years later."

For, yes, the precocious Guareschi children-- Albertino and Carlotta (aka "La Passionaria")-- are all grown up, married, and moved out. But the Guareschi homestead is as lively as ever, thanks not only to the frequent visits of the soon-added grandchildren ("Michelone" and "the Phenomenon") but also to the household's addition of a thoroughly modern (and very outspoken) domestic assistant by the name of "Jo" (in Italian, "Gio").

The book is somewhat artificially divided into two sections, respectively entitled "From Teacher to Pupil" and "Stories About Jo."  I say "artificially" divided because, while the first part is heavier on Guareschi's reminiscences and the second part does feature more of Jo's adventures, both sections really deal with the same thing: the clash between the old world (of Giovannino and Margherita) and the new (of the younger generation in the modernized, prosperous Italy of the 1960's).

According to the jacket flap of my Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux edition of the book, just a few days before his death (in the summer of 1968) Guareschi had written to a friend, "I live as isolated as an old blackbird up in a tree. I whistle, but who's to say the people down there hear me, or do they mistake me for a crow?"  The jacket blurb goes on to comment that this seems "a strange farewell from the most widely read Italian author in the world," and so it does. But GG's perception of himself as a lone voice crying in the wilderness dates at least as far back as 1963's Comrade Don Camillo (see that book's afterword), and probably farther (consider all those references to "my 23 readers"!).

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I've included eight stories from The Family Guareschi here--enough to give you a taste of the book and of the older, more cynical, and ever-so modernity-distrusting voice of the GG who speaks in it. Just click on the title of any one that you want to read (or use the Contents bar at left); each story page is linked back to this page.