Italian · Intermediate
Read L'esclusa in Italianwith every sentence explained
English title: The Outcast
Luigi Pirandello · 1901
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About the book
L'esclusa by Luigi Pirandello was first published in 1901. In Passage you read the full text in the original Italian, marked intermediate and filed under historical fiction and romance. It runs to about 57,300 words.
One letter. One jealous husband. One innocent woman condemned by a whole town.
In a small Sicilian town, Marta Ajala has not been married long when her husband, Rocco Pentàgora, catches her reading a letter from Gregorio Alvignani, a brilliant and ambitious lawyer. Marta has done nothing wrong, but Rocco throws her out of the house that same day, and everyone is sure she is guilty.
Back in her parents' home, with her mother and her sister Maria, Marta must face her father's fury and the endless gossip of the neighbours. Determined not to be crushed, she sets out to make her own way in the world, but the town has not finished with her yet.
Pirandello's first novel, written in 1893 and published in 1901, The Outcast already holds his great theme: the gap between what is true and what other people choose to believe. It remains a powerful, strikingly modern portrait of a woman judged by her society.
- Author
- Luigi Pirandello
- First published
- 1901
- Language
- Italian
- Level
- Intermediate
- Genre
- Historical Fiction, Romance
- Length
- About 57,300 words
How it opens
Sotto la cappa del camino, ch’era come una mezza tramoggia enorme rovesciata, la vecchia Pentàgora, quella sera, borbottava tra sè più del solito, mordicchiando le còcche del grosso fazzoletto nero, di lana, che teneva in capo, annodato sotto il mento.
Come se le stipe e i tizzoni, scoppiettando, cigolando o levando fanfaluche, le parlassero, ella soleva tutto il giorno, lì, aggrondata e ingrugnata, far lunghi discorsi col fuoco, e ogni tanto gestiva a scatti, con le mani secche, nere, dalle dita agilissime. Parlava continuamente così, tra sè, fondendo le parole precipitose, quasi imitasse un ruzzolìo di fusi.
Reading L'esclusa in Passage
Passage sets the book as a quiet, paginated reader in Italian. Read at your own pace, and when a sentence stops you, tap it. You get:
- a natural translation of that exact sentence,
- a short note on the grammar, in plain words,
- the key words, which you can save with the sentence they came from,
- all of it in English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Turkish or Portuguese, whichever you read best.
It's marked intermediate: comfortable once everyday Italian feels familiar, with the harder sentences one tap away. The words you save come back later in short review games, so the book keeps teaching after you close it.
