Although his fame rests mainly on revolutionary plays such as Sei personaggi in cerca d'autore (1921; translated as Six Characters in Search of an Author, 1922), Enrico IV (1922; translated as Henry IV, 1960), and Cosí è (Se vi pare) (1918; translated as Right You Are (If You Think So), 1923), all of which inspired Eugène Ionesco and Samuel Beckett and their theater of the absurd, Luigi Pirandello's contribution to twentieth-century narrative is equally significant. The sheer quantity is noteworthy, for he produced 7 novels and 237 short stories. Yet, more important, his narratives provided the germ for his dramas, since all his plays drew on material and ideas from his short stories. As Giovanni Macchia remarks in Pirandello o la stanza della tortura (Pirandello, or The Torture Chamber, 1981), Pirandello the fiction writer is difficult, if not impossible, to separate from the playwright and the essayist. The reader encounters the same characters from...