The Professor and the Siren by Giuseppe Tomasi Di Lampedusa, reviewed by Stephen Theaker

The Professor and the Siren (New York Review Books, 78pp) is a new translation by Stephen Twilley of three stories by Giuseppe Tomasi Di Lampedusa, all of which originally appeared in the 1961 collection I racconti. The book will also include an introduction by Marina Warner (not available for review).

The first and longest is the thirty-eight-page title story, “The Professor and the Siren”, in its Italian publication “La Sirena” (the title change is perhaps to distinguish this volume from others), about an elderly professor who reminisces fondly about his sexual encounter, at the age of twenty-four, with a mermaid who had “the smooth face of a sixteen-year-old”, an “adolescent” with “features of infantile purity” and “decidedly youthful sensuality”.