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This Strega Prize winner “ticks all the boxes of a thriller while also being a masterfully written, baroque, many-faceted depiction of modern Italy” (The Spectator). Bari, southern Italy: On a stifling summer night, on the outskirts of town, a young woman named Clara, daughter of the region’s most prominent family of real estate developers, stumbles naked, dazed, and bloodied down a major highway. Her death will be deemed a suicide. Her estranged half-brother, however, cannot free himself from her memory or the questions surrounding her death, and the more he learns about Clara’s life, the more he reveals the moral decay at the core of his family’s ascent to social prominence. Winn...
Ferocity combines the suspense of Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl, the contemporary realism of Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom, and the fierce Mediterranean vision displayed in Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Quartet. At once an intimate family saga and a cinematic portrait of the moral and political corruption of an entire society, Ferocity is an ambitious, gripping work by Italy’s foremost literary novelist. Bari, the 1980s. On a stifling summer’s night, on the outskirts of a southern Italian metropolis, the young socialite Clara Salvemini stumbles naked, dazed, and bloodied down a major highway. Clara is the daughter of real estate mogul Vittorio Salvemini, patriarch of one of the region’s most prominent families. Her death is immediately labeled a suicide. Her estranged half-brother, however, cannot free himself from her memory or the questions surrounding her passing, and the more he learns about Clara’s life, the more he uncovers the moral decay at the core of the Salvemini ascent to social prominence.
Looks beyond the tourist facade of Italy's capital. This is the real city of Fellini, Pasolini and countless other major artists who devoted their lives to depicting the grandeur and decadence of this ever fascinating metropolis.
A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF FALL 2021 Following the international success of Ties and the National Book Award-shortlisted Trick, Domenico Starnone gives readers another searing portrait of human relationships and human folly. Pietro and Teresa’s love affair is tempestuous and passionate. After yet another terrible argument, she gets an idea: they should tell each other something they’ve never told another person, something they’re too ashamed to tell anyone. They will hear the other’s confessions without judgment and with love in their hearts. In this way, Teresa thinks, they will remain united forever, more intimately connected than ever. A few days after sharing their shameful secre...
For fans of Truman Capote and Emmanuel Carrere "Psychogeography at its most perceptive."— Financial Times In March 2016, in an apartment on the outskirts of Rome, two "ordinary" young men brutally tortured and murdered twenty-two-year-old Luca Varani. News of the seemingly inexplicable crime sent shockwaves across Rome and beyond. After the crime comes to light, Lagioia begins investigating the crime by meeting with the victim's family and corresponding with one of the killers. It soon becomes clear, however, that to investigate this crime means to descend into the darkest corners of Rome and of the human psyche. Lagioia leads us through a maze of betrayed expectations, sexual confusion, economic grievances and identity crises to locate the breaking point, the point after which anything is possible. Sharp, hypnotic, devastating, The City of The Living is not just the story of a crime, but of human nature itself: the tension between responsibility and guilt, between the drive to oppress and the desire to be free, between who we are and who we can become.
The tragic history of mid-century Europe told through the lives of ordinary people 1938. Thirty-two countries convene to decide how to deal with the influx of Jews fleeing Nazi Germany and Austria. Good intentions abound, but no government is willing to accept the refugees. At the same time, Fascist Italy is introducing its infamous racial laws. In this new, stirring novel Lia Levi portrays Italy's tragic past through the story of a Jewish family, plagued by doubts, passions, weaknesses, impulses, and betrayals. Set in Genoa in the years of the racial laws, the novel follows a would-be genius son, a disappointed, regretful mother, a wise but irresolute father, an eccentric grandfather, nosy uncles, cousins who are always coming and going. How do individuals face the darkest periods of history? Will anyone rebel against the spread of violence and discrimination? Will anyone welcome them if this family flees certain persecution? A harrowing story that resonates with special urgency in our time.
"Fourteen years after the publication of his cult classic I Barbari, Baricco returns in The Game to the topic of change, in a journey that maps out the transformations that the digital revolution has wrought upon the landscape of human experience. From Space Invaders to the PlayStation, from Windows 95 to the conundrum of artificial intelligence, Baricco traces the trajectory of a revolution in the way we think, feel, and communicate - and seeks to discover what it might actually mean for our future."--Amazon
The Strega Award–winning Italian author’s “scalding and incisive” novel of marriage and family bonds that come undone in the wake of an affair (Library Journal, starred review). A New York Times Notable Book of the Year A Sunday Times and Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year Winner of the 2015 Bridge Prize for Best Novel Italy, 1970s. Like many marriages, Vanda and Aldo’s has been subject to strain, attrition, and the burden of routine. Yet it has survived intact. Or so things appear. The rupture in their marriage lies years in the past, but if one looks closely enough, the fissures and fault lines are evident. It is a cracked vase that may shatter at the slightest touch. Or perhap...
"Five-year-old Daisy Gonzalez's father is always waiting for her at the bus stop. But today, he isn't, and Daisy disappears. When Daisy goes missing, nearly everyone in town suspects or knows something different about what happened. And they also know a lot about each other. The immigrants who work in the dairy farm know their employers' secrets. The hairdresser knows everything except what's happening in her own backyard. And the roadkill collector knows love and heartbreak more than anyone would ever expect. They are all connected, in ways small and profound, open and secret"--
In this courageous, inventive, irreverent, and shrewd novel, Viola Di Grado tells the story of a suicide and what follows. She gives voice to an astonishing vision of life after life, portraying the awful longing and sense of loss that plague the dead, together with the solitude provoked by the impossibility of communicating. The afterlife itself is seen as a dark, seething place where one is preyed upon by the cruel and unrelenting elements. Hollow Heart will frighten as it provokes, enlighten as it causes concern. If ever there were a novel that follows Kafka’s prescription for a book to be an axe for the frozen sea within us, it is Hollow Heart. In this, Di Grado’s second novel after 70% Acrylic 30% Wool, the twenty-seven-year-old prodigy gives proof of her reputation as a singular and explosive talent.