The Late Mattia Pascal

Life hasn’t gone Mattia Pascal’s way.

His father died when he was a child, and an insidious swindler began taking advantage of his naive mother, gradually reducing the family to poverty.

Now a grown man, Mattia feels trapped. His dreary, pointless job bores him, his miserable wife barely tolerates him, his bitter shrew of a mother-in-law torments him, and crushing debts loom like a dark cloud over him.

But when his baby daughter and his mother tragically die on the same day, despair drives him to run away from home, and fate delivers him to the gambling tables of Monte Carlo. An improbable chain of events offers him a golden opportunity that few will ever see: the chance to start fresh with a whole new identity and a whole new life, one of his choosing, of his creation. Complete freedom!

But what will he do when he realizes that this new existence is really a new mask, a cruel prison of lies?

With its universal human themes, the bizarre tale of Mattia Pascal remains surprisingly contemporary and engaging today, more than 120 years after it was first published. This fresh, modern translation unlocks the sardonic wit and disturbing tragedy of Pirandello’s odyssey through illusion in his quest for meaning.