Racconti romani - Alberto Moravia

A collection of short stories from the late 40s and 50s, originally published in a roman newspaper on a regular basis (imagine when you could read this quality of fiction as installations in a newspaper!)  Excellent short stories - quickly sketch the characters and outline the situation or incident.  Storie del popolo, which probably would have been different at the time.  Linked to the similar movement in Italian postwar cinema?  Always a jab, a surprise, a little moral at the very end.  Extremely well written.  It creates such a different picture from the romantic daydream that has become our image of Italy and Italians, as if there are no poor, no creeps, no cafone living there (true of certain other European cultures too...)