Known for her fantastical and allegorical style and for her affiliation with “magic realism,” Paola Masino’s reputation rests chiefly on her novels, particularly Nascita e morte della massaia, and on works that are seemingly confined to female subjectivity and the private sphere. This article examines Masino’s short fiction to reveal a more public, engagé, side of the author. After a close reading of “Fame,” “Famiglia,” “Lino,” “Terzo anniversario” and “Paura,” it focuses on the two racconti brevi “Una parola che vola” and “Il nobile gallo” in order to highlight the neo-realist aspect of the pieces and to argue that Masino drew on allegories, fables, and parables to engage with history. It also maintains that Masino used her pen as a political tool to denounce the horror and suffering of war, to foster a commitment to the Resistance, and to call for the cultural and political reconstruction of Italy.

Researchers should cite this work as follows:

• Rozier, L., (2025), "Paola Masino's Short Fiction: Another Voice in the Collective Experience of Italian Neorealism", HSSCommons: (DOI: )

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1. Quaderni d'italianistica

Original publication: Rozier, Louise. "Paola Masino's Short Fiction: Another Voice in the Collective Experience of Italian Neorealism." Quaderni d'italianistica 29 (1): 2009. 145-163. DOI: 10.33137/q.i..v29i1.8497. This material has been re-published in an unmodified form on the Canadian HSS Commons with the permission of Iter Canada / Quaderni d'italianistica. Copyright © the author(s). Their work is distributed by Quaderni d'italianistica under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. For details, see https://creativecommons.org/licenses/.