Vittorio Sereni (1913–1983) is widely regarded as the finest Italian poet of the generation after Montale. From Frontier (1941), his ‘pre-war book though with one foot in the war’, through Algerian Diary (1947) which reflects his POW experience, to Variable Star (1981) and the posthumously collected work, his poetry is a faithful testimony to its times: the period of fascist dictatorship, the vicissitudes of life in Italy through the years of post-war reconstruction, the economic miracle of the 1960s and beyond. But although the backdrop of the poems is specific in time and place, it is their growing metaphysical dimension which makes Sereni a poet in whose work the fullest apprehension of life is to be found.

This is the first substantial volume of his work to appear in English. It spans the whole of his creative career, and is designed to give a sense of the structure and coherence of his work as a whole.