“Her Husband is by turns funny, bitingly satirical, and tinged with anguish.” — Translation Review
“[T]here are mordant dissections, striking psychological observations, individual flashes of brilliance, and above all, the promise of things and themes to come in his later plays. . . . [A]s a portrait of a great artist in progress torward the full maturity of his vision [Her Husband] is an indispensable read for Pirandello lovers.” — Desmond Ryan , Philadelphia Inquirer
“King and Frese Witt have done a superior job of rendering Pirandello’s vivacious prose into flowing contemporary American English.” — F. A. Bassanese , Choice
“The last of Pirandello’s seven novels to be translated into English, Her Husband is an invigorating backstage satire that, along with its melodramatic delights, reveals some of the careerist fears and sexual fantasies on the underside of the writer’s mask. . . . Her Husband provides serious entertainment, from its amusing lampoon of the increasingly ‘feminized’ Italian literary scene at the turn of the century to the suggestive dualities swirling around its battle of the sexes, a sardonic family romance where both the father and mother give birth to monsters.” — Bill Marx , WBUR Theater Reviews Newsletter
“This is a complex tale: Pirandello mocks his own characters, while at the same time revealing their emotional turmoil so sensitively that the reader is still moved to sympathy for their plight.” — Bonnie Johnston , Booklist
“This successful translation provides English readers access to a compelling work from one of the masters of twentieth-century literature.” — Alan Tinkler , Review of Contemporary Fiction
“Translated into English for the first time, Her Husband was written in 1911 before any of the major dramas on which Pirandello’s international reputation is based were produced. . . . The translators are to be commended on including an ‘Afterword’ that is both informative and enlightening. References to Roman history, the rise of literacy in Italy and the accomplishments of the Giolitti government provide an insight into the novel’s complexities.” — International Theatre Institute
“[Pirandello’s] real interest seems to lie in exploring the relationship between femininity and creativity, an interest that takes his artistry far beyond his own time and his own prejudices to chart new territory. His intricate and subtle explorations of the mind of the woman writer, of the relations between creation and procreation, and the contradictions inherent in literature as art and literature as business, speak to the preoccupation of the twenty-first century as they did to the first years of the 1900s.” — from the Afterword
“Pirandello’s fiction has been overshadowed in America by his epoch-making plays, and one of his seven extraordinary novels has never even been published in English. Till now, that is, thanks to excellent translators, Martha King and Mary Ann Frese Witt. American readers will have great fun with Her Husband.” — Eric Bentley