Along with such classics as In Cold Blood and Breakfast at Tiffany's, Truman Capote had a history of work left uncompleted and unpublished; a fate not shared anymore by Another Day in Paradise, a short story that was finally published for the first time ever in The Strand Magazine, on Friday, September 22, 2023.
"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," declared The Strand Magazine managing editor Andrew Gulli. 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.
Capote was in his mid-20s and a rising star when he moved from New York City to Taormina, Sicily, in 1950 and settled in a scenic villa named Fontana Vecchia, once occupied by D.H. Lawrence. Acclaimed for his debut novel, Other Voices, Other Rooms, and for his eerie short story Miriam, Capote would describe the move to Europe as a needed escape from the American literary scene, which he likened to living inside a light bulb, and an ideal setting to get work done: He wrote the novel The Grass Harp in Sicily and worked on numerous short stories. Another Day In Paradise is a vignette written as well at the time of his Sicilian retreat.
Written at a time of relative contentment for Capote, Another Day In Paradise is a narrative of disillusion and entrapment: The middle-aged American heiress Iris Greentree has used her inheritance – a small one because her mother didn't trust her with money – to buy a villa in Sicily. She will end up betrayed by the local man who persuaded her to invest her money, Signor Carlo Petruzzi, and too broke to sell the home and return to the US. The Strand Magaine has published rare works by Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, and many others.