The woman and the priest

Deledda (1871-1936), a Sardinian-born author who received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1926. She was the first Italian woman to be awarded the honour. This novel was first published in the original Italian as La madre in 1920 and appeared in this English translation in 1922. The mother and the priest is the story of a struggle between a priest, his lover and his mother. It 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.