From the archives of the Library of Congress, The Strand Magazine has uncovered yet another story from a classic writer. This time, the story comes from Truman Capote, author of the 1958 novella Breakfast at Tiffany’s which quickly became the beloved Audrey Hepburn film. His 1966 true crime masterpiece, In Cold Blood, as well as other short stories and novellas, established Capote as a major figure in American literature.
Another Day in Paradise was published today, for the first time ever, in The Strand. “The story was found in an old red and gold-scrolled Florentine notebook … A stamp on the inside front cover indicates that Capote purchased the notebook in Venice at the Legatoria Piazzesi, Italy’s oldest paper shop, which is still up and running in the San Marco district.” Carefully transcribed from Capote’s own manuscript, which was handwritten in pencil, the story required several translators and consultations to work through his Italian and define obscure Sicilian words.
The short story is set in a villa in Taormina, Sicily where Truman Capote himself spent time — a villa that is still intact today. Another Day in Paradise follows Miss Iris Greentree, an American woman trapped by her own misfortune in a foreign country. Upon her arrival, she admires the beauty of Italy, but after being swindled by the handsome widower architect Carlo Petruzzi, she is doomed to spend Another Day in Paradise in the newly built villa she despises.
Miss Greentree’s perception of Sicily is soured, her dreams of writing a book have dwindled and her money has run out, though she stubbornly refuses to sell the villa, out of fear of fulfilling her late mother’s prophecy that she will throw away her money. So when Miss Greentree bumps into the British Mrs. Daphne Beatty-Bayliss, the two ex-pats are united, “un-alike in every way except their shared struggle to maintain dignity in a foreign land.”
Evidently, the story is, in part, inspired by Truman Capote’s own time in Sicily, as documented in his essay “Fontana Vecchia”. “Capote, like Chekhov, plumbed the depths of his experience to turn out stories that felt alive and real, and Another Day in Paradise is no exception,” says Andrew Gulli, Managing Editor of The Strand. This piece is a valuable addition to Capote’s canon of work and affirms his status as one of the great American writers.
