One, None and a Hundred Thousand

Nobel prize-winning Luigi Pirandello's classic novel on the nature of identity brims with sly humor, compelling drama, and skillfully depicted, oddly modern characters—all capped with timeless insight into the fragile human psyche. The novel had a rather long and difficult period of gestation. Pirandello began writing it in 1909.
The novel begins when Vitangelo Moscarda's wife remarks that Vitangelo's nose tilts to the right. This commonplace interaction spurs the novel's unemployed, wealthy...