The mother

Chapter 2: TRANSLATOR’S NOTE

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About This Book

A tightly contained psychological drama set in a remote Sardinian hill village traces the emotional turmoil of a peasant mother and her son, a young parish priest, once the product of her sacrifices. When a solitary woman enters the parish, the son’s suppressed human desires clash with his clerical vows, and the mother confronts terror, devotion, and a new empathetic questioning of religious strictures. Over the course of two intense days the narrative maps internal conflicts, communal superstitions, and quiet domestic detail, culminating in an inevitable, tragic resolution shaped by love, conscience, and social law.

TRANSLATOR’S NOTE

The Mother⁠[1] is an unusual book, both in its story and its setting in a remote Sardinian hill village, half civilized and superstitious. But the chief interest lies in the psychological study of the two chief characters, and the action of the story takes place so rapidly (all within the space of two days) and the actual drama is so interwoven with the mental conflict, and all so forced by circumstances, that it is almost Greek in its simple and inevitable tragedy.

The book is written without offence to any creed or opinions, and touches on no questions of either doctrine or Church government. It is just a human problem, the result of primitive human nature against man-made laws it cannot understand.

[1] Translated from the Italian novel La Madre.