After the Divorce

Set in a remote Sardinian village, this early novel by the future Nobel laureate Grazia Deledda follows Giovanna Era, whose husband Costantino is sent to prison for a killing he swears he did not commit. Left alone and impoverished, she takes advantage of a new Italian law to divorce him and marry another man, only for conscience and fate to complicate every choice she makes. Deledda renders the customs, superstitions, and hard rural life of her island with unsentimental care, showing how tradition and social judgment press down on ordinary people. The result is a quietly tragic study of love, guilt, and endurance. It helped build the reputation that would earn her the 1926 Nobel Prize in Literature. Offered here as a free PDF and EPUB edition.