Eleven short stories following Italian characters exploring life in an era of media oversaturation.
 
Salvatore Pane’s The Neorealist in Winter is a collection of eleven short stories that explore what it means to be human in an age of media oversaturation. Utilizing methods of speculative, historical, and postmodern storytelling, Pane grapples with legacies of immigration, poverty, toxic masculinity, and moral failures, while focusing on working-class issues, family drama, and PTSD. Following eleven Italian narrators, Pane builds a cast of cinematic characters across disparate times and places—a struggling director attends a house party in the la dolce vita of 1960s Rome, gangsters chase a low-level lottery runner in coal valley Scranton, a woman contemplates experimental surgery to purge memories of her childhood trauma in Minnesota, and a pro wrestling promoter descends into self-denial through his autobiography.

The Neorealist in Winter was selected by Venita Blackburn as the winner of the 2022 Autumn House Fiction Prize.
 

"Eleven stories that cast different facets of Italian American identity in a neo-noir light. . . . A cinematic thread weaves through them, and it can feel as though scenes are written with the camera in mind, what with dramatic last-minute trains to Siena, British hand models riding in shiny cars, and deals made while picking at shrimp cocktails. . . . It’s in these stories that Pane’s sense of play is most evident, and they buoy the collection. Vivid fiction that asks how you can run from your past when it made you who you are." - Kirkus