Here you will find a list of authors in the public domain, which you can use as inspiration for your work.

Whenever it's available, we will update the files in pdf. Otherwise, we will leave you the link to buy the author's works.

Salvatore Di Giacomo

Il Menuetto

Salvatore Di Giacomo was an Italian poet and dramatist of the early 20th century.
He’s most known for his poetry in Neapolitan language and he is credited as being one of those responsible for renewing it.

The minuet is a short story published in 1914.

Di Giacomo's words conduct us inside the home of an old musician turned deaf.
The memory of an old love awakens in his soul a melody that ears can’t hear anymore.

This story is the starting point for Alter Echo.

Hidden in the author's novels collection, this short story stole a piece of our hearts leaving us at the same time with a bittersweet taste.

Federigo Tozzi

Bestie

Federigo Tozzi was a Tuscan writer of the 20th Century who's been rediscovered many years after his death.

Dialectal jargon, countryside or small-town settings, and sensitivity toward his inner dimension are his signatures.
We find all that in "Bestie" a collection of lyrical fragments, all united by the presence of an animal.
In a fragment, Tozzi narrates a marital quarrel interrupted by an ant, about to dive into the couple's wine. The tiny and concrete threat, such as having to throw away the wine, allows the couple to find a meeting point.

That is just one of the many fragments found inside "Bestie" a ferment of visual and sensory gimmicks.

Cesare Pavese

Melancholic, nostalgic, human, tied to the semantics of the earth: Cesare Pavese is one of the voices of the Italian 20th Century.


In his style, we find solitude, the pain of unrequited love, and contemplation of a non-industrialized Italian suburb.


Linked to Turin and the Langhe region, he was an author of prose and poetry. An enthusiast of American literature, he has translated many American writers, including Melville with Moby Dick.

James Joyce

Eveline from The Dubliners

When, in a novel, we encounter the stream of consciousness of a character, and we get lost in his psychology, it appears completely normal to us. But we have to thank James Joyce for that.
James Joyce is one of the most crucial and revolutionary authors of the 20th century. In all of his works, Joyce tried to recreate the frenetic language of thoughts, dedicating himself to the interiority of his characters.
His subjects are ordinary people, united by the inability to make choices that can improve their lives. His characters are paralyzed, doomed, and disillusioned.
Eveline is part of his collection of short stories The Dubliners. Here, Joyce captures the still and stale soul of the city through protagonists unable to change and be happy. So it's the fate of Eveline: while trying to escape from her condition, she can't help but feel more imprisoned in her miserable life.

The Dubliners is a mine of stories and inner conflicts that are still relevant today. A reading in which we invite you to immerse yourself and discover an author who, layer by layer, captures the complexity of the mind.




Grazia Deledda

The first and only Italian woman to have won the Nobel Prize for literature, Grazia Deledda continues to remain too often and unfairly in the shadow of Italian literature.


Her writing style is difficult to put inside a category. Her works have more of an international feeling rather than a local one. She was a very determined woman who followed her aspirations and worked hard for her results.


Her writing is passionate, involved, emotional, and deeply tied to Sardinia. A land that she loved and of which she has never stopped writing about, portraying it as a place rich in traditions, magical, almost mystical.


In Alter Echo, we look for voices of literature that can still speak strongly today, and we feel that Grazia Deledda's voice deserves to be heard.

Virginia Woolf

A Haunted House

Voice of freedom thinking, Virginia Woolf takes the legacy of Victorian literature and uproots it from its foundations.

She goes from a schematic and consequential approach to a free and unruly stream of consciousness, using the narrative time to her liking.

The point of view, as for Joyce, passes inside the minds of the characters, who get lost in everyday thoughts, or experience moments of deep sensitivity.

She captured the essence of her era and gave us an intimate and authentic glimpse of the twentieth century. She wrote about her experience as a woman in a world made up of men, affirming her point of view on the need for female emancipation.

She has carved out a space of her own, word after word, becoming impossible to ignore.

A haunted house is a short story about a couple experiencing the presence of a ghostly couple in their home. The house feels alive and throbbing, haunted by these ghosts constantly looking for a hidden treasure.

In Virginia Woolf, you will find sensitivity, lively characters, and fluid, unconventional use of narrative tempo.

Franz Kafka

The Neighbour

Franz Kafka lived a short and painful life. He felt haunted by a strong feeling of inadequacy and the incapacity to feel love or be loved by anyone.


Kafka could create immersive and paranoid stories marked by a sense of oppression and helplessness towards a frightening power: that of a state seen as a tyrant.
Tyrant as his father. A man who was never able to love, understand and accept him.


Without Kafka's works, 20th Century literature would not be the same.
When we use the adjective Kafkaesque, we speak of that sense of anguish towards a world we don't understand, and driven by our insecurities, we feel small, lost, useless, and out of place.


Kafka gives us empathetic, complex, and three-dimensional characters moved by an oppressive conflict.
In very few words, he creates immersive and powerful stories like his short story The Neighbor. 

A single page is enough for us to understand the unease of this man who sees one of his competitors renting the office next door.
The protagonist feels tormented by his paranoia, and the fear of losing all his clients convinces him that his new neighbor can steal all his clients by listening to all his conversations.


The conflict is clear, practical, and perfectly contextualized. An excellent starting point to expand the story with an adaptation.

Edgar Allan Poe (1909 - 1949)
Edgar Allan Poe

The Masque of the Red Death

While the Red Death plague decimates his kingdom, Prince Prospero locks up in his castle with a small circle of friends between nobles and knights. Walled inside, they celebrate for months, but when a mysterious figure dressed as the Red Death appears among the guests, the castle walls become the scene of a deadly bloodbath.


The Masque of the Red Death is a short story by Edgar Allan Poe. Through a grotesque and distressing narrative, we discover the devastating effects of the cholera epidemic. Rich in visual elements and sound suggestions, and despite the medieval setting, the story is still lucidly current.


Master of horror and father of the detective story, Edgar Allan Poe, is famous for his dark, gothic, and disturbing atmospheres. With his horror style, he focuses on building anxiety with creepy set-ups and profoundly sick characters.

With his works, Poe tells us that the most frightening monster is the one that hides in the shadows, the one we cannot see, or the one curled up inside us.