Strega-shortlised novel set in Turin during the 80s, the narrator immerges his gaze in the deteriorating flesh of his father, a butcher, who after an incident at work, succumbs to a long illness. A relationship defined by distance, silence, and suppressed emotions, the narrator finds form for his grief with a surgical, and in its own way, deeply intimate precision.

His father splits open the animals, entering their innards, separating muscles from membranes, extracting organs and bones. His father sells parts of the animals. His father immerses himself in the biological abyss and comes out bearing steaks. The incisions in the meat are his craft and his art. His father is a butcher. His father has the task of venturing into dead flesh and coming out of it with offerings for the living, so that life may continue its insatiable cycle. He is a ferryman between the shores of meat and flesh. At the sales counter of the market, he serves the cowards who don’t confront the bodies they eat, who don’t want to know about it, who delegate the dirty work to the butchers. One day, something goes wrong in the perfect choreography of blades, and a deflected knife almost cuts off his thumb. It’s the beginning of another descent into flesh, this time, his own. It starts with an infection, followed by a diagnosis, sanitary procedures, and trips to a clinic abroad. The son Dario, twenty years old, immerses his gaze in his father’s deteriorating flesh, and in the melancholy of saying goodbye. We enter his gaze, prehensile and precise, watching his father fall. This precision embodying his devotion and suffering.

Sandro Veronesi’s proposal for the Strega Prize:

“With a language that is alive like the din of voices at the market, Dario Voltolini delivers to us a gem of fiction, sensitivity, and

memory, capable of forcefully dragging us into the spiral of suffering, at times subdued, at times chaotic but always gripping, as far as a place that is simultaneously hell and a refuge in the memory of when everything seemed to be okay.”

#GRIEF #MEMORY #FATHERANDSON #INTIMACY #SUFFERING #CUTTING #VISCERAL #LYRICAL

COMPARABLE TO Grief is the Thing with Feathers by

Max Porter for its sensitivity and unique lens on grief.

Dario Voltolino (Turin, 1959) is a writer of short stories, novels, radio dramas, song lyrics, and librettos for musical theatre. He is a lecturer at the Holden Academy. He curates the Pennisole imprint for Hopefulmonster publishers.

“Dario Voltolini proves himself to be one of the most interesting voices of our literary landscape. Emotional rigour is his great style.”

Romana Pietri

“Voltolini accompanies us on the most communal and mysterious of journeys in the most original way.”

Letizia Muratori

Winner of the 2023 Bagutta Prize, the novel has a numbered sequence of small passages, seemingly random fragments that together tell a story, a story that delimits the void of the protagonist’s loneliness as he visits the place of his brother’s disappearance. With an original form and poetic style, it has a compelling narrative that ties it all together, especially when it takes an unexpected but moving turn with the arrival of J. and her story of loneliness and triumph as a trans refugee.

How can you fill the void of loneliness when it surrounds you on every side like the sea surrounds a rock? This is what the protagonist of this story asks himself, having moved to a remote island hoping to find answers about the disappearance of his brother F., who may have killed himself right on these shores. The truth, however, seems far away, hidden in the silence of the island’s inhabitants; unclear like the pages of the book that his brother left unfinished, and to which he is trying to write an ending; ineffable like the fear that paralyses him and pushes him to increasingly close himself off; unreachable, like the whale-shaped island that he observes from the shore. At least until he meets J., a girl on a red bike, who seems to hide the key to understanding what happened to F. and to dissolving the veneer of silence behind which he finds himself prisoner.

#GRIEF #LONELINESS #FRAGMENTED #POETIC #SILENCE #ISLAND #EXPERIMENTAL

COMPARABLE TO Bluets by Maggie Nelson and The White Book by Han Kang for their explorations of love and grief through unique fragmentary forms that blur the line between poetry and prose.

Andrea De Spirt was born in Venice in 1989 and currently lives in Milan. Every Creature is an Island is his debut novel and was the winner of the 2023 Bagutta Prize, and finalist for the Flaiano Prize and the Mastercard Prize. His second novel is due to publish in early 2026.

“De Spirt maintains, to great effect, a tone of suspense that gives form to one of the beautiful notes that punctuate the novel: “For the Greeks, the search would begin first with waiting.”

Alessandro Berretta, La Lettura Corriere della sera

“A novel about the beauty of individuality that never becomes individualism, a logbook with numbered paragraphs that become the emotional coordinates of those who want to become an adult in an adulterated world. And this is what is missing today in contemporary novels: the courage to be oneself.”

Gian Paolo Serino, il Giornale

First published in 1966 by Feltrinelli

288 pages

Strega Prize Finalist

Other Works by the Author:

Natalia (1930) – Translated into French

Courtyard to Cleopatra (1936) – Translated into Swedish, Dutch, French, & Swiss German

Levantine Ballad (1961, 2024) – Translated into German, Polish, English, & Romanian

Wind on the Sand (1972, 2023)

The Four Weiselberger Girls (1976) – Winner of the Strega Prize and translated into

German, Slovak, & French

“It’s this modernity of hers, this knowing how to recognise herself as both strong and fragile in

adversity, contradictory and unresolved but also determined, that makes her relevant and

engaging for readers today.”

—Donatella Di Pietrantonio, Tuttolibri

“Another highlight of this novel, endowed with a refined writing style but without indulging,

is in fact the appeal for, at least looking ahead, a recognition of female dignity in a social

portrait reinvented using its very foundations.”

—Alberto Casadei, La Lettura

Synopsis

The novel is set in post-war Milan, where a large family find a home in a cramped loft, and Camilla, abandoned by her husband, takes charge of the situation as they endure an incredibly severe winter. The season stretches throughout the novel with beautiful but unsettling descriptions that sit like the heavy snow weighing down the loft’s dilapidated roofs.

In these harsh but intimate conditions, the characters co-exist and persevere, strained by desires for the future and scars from the past. The narrative seamlessly flows between the characters’ thoughts, placing us inside these intimate quarters and the struggle that unites and divides them. By the time spring comes, an unthinkable tragedy will have occurred, and as the season of rebirth begins, much will have irrevocably changed.

Author, journalist, and translator, Fausta Cialente was one of the first self-declared feminist Italian writers. Her early work anticipated modern feminism by decades, however, distribution was limited by the Fascist censorship that followed her refusal to cut depictions of a lesbian affair from her first book Natalia (1931). Contributing to the anti-Fascist movement through her journalism from Egypt, Cialente returned home after the war, and after a long silence, she began publishing again in 1961, eventually winning the prestigious Strega Prize in 1976. With her expatriation that can be interpretated as an influence on the statelessness of her work, Cialente remained far from literary circles and wrote only when she had the urge. Perhaps due to these factors and the initial censorship, her critical recognition came late, and consequently, there has been limited international exposure to this exceptional Italian writer. Cialente spent the last period of her life in Pangbourne, England, working mainly on translations into Italian from English, including Turn of the Screw by Henry James, and she remained there until her death in 1994 at the age of 96.

Over 150.000 copies sold to date

Rights sold in 21 countries

Winner of the Campiello Prize

Winner of the Strega Off Prize (voted for by the public and select magazines)

Finalist for the Strega Prize

“In a visionary and original novel, so literary and lush in its prose, the protagonist Gaia, while facing tragedies and separations, experiences a ferocious determinism that falls upon her and seems to deny any possibility of redemption.”

—Corriere della sera (La Lettura)

“In The Lake’s Water is Never Sweet, a bestseller in Italy, Caminito writes about first friendships and first loves, money troubles, family arguments, betrayals - without resorting to ordinary clichés of the ‘dolce vita’. Caminito’s narrative voice is direct, raw, cold, but never distant. This book won’t let anyone ever get away - like the lake of Bracciano.”

—Der Spiegel

Synopsis

This is the story of a working-class family dominated by a fierce mother figure, forced to leave Rome and find a new home in a social housing project in a small town built on an ancient lake and a forgotten city. Gaia, the daughter, spends her youth in this hostile town, facing a world that has nothing to offer her, and will never accept her. Here, she will find love and friendship, but without ever truly embracing them, feeling the weight of expectations, betrayal, jealousy, and loneliness. From a life spent striving to be no less than anyone else, with a mother who adamantly pressures her to chase after an impossible redemption. As time passes, Gaia finds it increasingly difficult to make the best of a bad situation. While her mother makes every effort to bear the weight of a wall about to collapse, Gaia wants to break it down and smash it into thousands of pieces that can cause harm, even to her.

In the background, there is the lake, the legends that surround it, the mysterious town that allegedly lies at the bottom, and the nativity scene that can be seen from the surface; these all linger, destined to remain in the reader’s heart alongside the protagonist, Gaia, whose compelling voice, along with her progressively violent retaliation to the walls that constrain her exposes the life of those who still struggle with the most basic human needs today, forced to live a humiliating existence. Caminito captures the contemporary reality of those at the bottom of society; from the mother’s obstinate hope of staying afloat in the midst of injustice, to the daughter’s surrender into resentment, uncovering the cheap illusions of emancipation, the broken promises of culture, and the mirage of education as an escape from barriers of class.

Giulia Caminito was born in 1988 and lives in Rome. Her first novel La grande A (Giunti, 2016) won the Bagutta Prize, Berto Prize and the Brancati Giovani Prize. She writes novels, short stories and children’s books. She published with Giunti the novel I delitti di Monteverde. La prima indagine di Gerarda Greco and with Bompiani Un giorno verrà, which has been translated into German and French. She writes for magazines and newspapers and has also worked in publishing.

“Valentina Mira didn’t react and didn’t report, and it took more than ten years before she was able to tell her story in a book, X, which is the account of ‘normal’ rape, where knives don’t emerge and punches don’t fly, but deep wounds remain in the body and the soul.”

Gaia Giorgetti, F

Synopsis

In X, Mira brilliantly teases out the contradictions and cyclical patterns that are all too familiar given the widespread sexual violence that still perseveres today. Captured in a story that is consuming, and for many will be eye-opening, but which frustratingly will be a reality for many others. This synthesis of fiction and reality is the remarkable product of Mira’s endeavour to apply mathematical logic to an impossible problem, to locate the X of a treasure that cannot be found, to give meaning to a tragedy that evades definition, and consequently, like the snake that eats its own tail, remains the status quo.

Mira introduces the book, why it is called X, and the events that lead her to write it i.e. the disappearance of her brother, and his decision to side with and believe the fascist friend who raped his sister. From the rape itself to the trauma that follows, the book conveys the brutal yet banal reality and the pain that is amplified by the codes of silence and the behaviour patterns that allow these vicious cycles to continue, eventually drawing even the protagonist into a complicit role. 

The painful trauma of being raped intensifies throughout the book as the protagonist is confronted with paradoxical traps at every turn. From the silence of those who protect the rapist, to the conflict of being scared to tell her hyper-catholic mother, to the period of numbness and apathy that prevents her from sharing with her brother. This struggle is only deepened when G., the rapist, comes to apologise, but only ‘because they were both drunk’. He soon shifts tone and tells her she’d have to prove it, highlighting the typical obstacles rape victims face, and then threatens to ruin her if she reports him. Even hearing a rape reported on the radio, she is reminded of the limited ways rape is portrayed in all media. 

And I think: is G. right? If the newspapers talk about violence only when it is so evident, maybe mine was not violence? He’s right, I am crazy?

The protagonist eventually resorts to self-harm, which will continue for years, although thanks to her mother’s loving response, she does at least find the courage to report the crime. However, despite the police being kind and helpful, later that day she receives a text from the officer who helped her inviting her to dinner.

What makes the book especially compelling is the tragedy of her brother’s betrayal, sharpened by her open letters to him and the bittersweet recollections of their close childhood together, when they found happiness with each other in spite of a father who threatened violence. After seeing her brother with G., she confesses to him what happened and he goes off to confront G. Before he returns, the protagonist recounts tender memories of her brother coming to her defense as children, setting up a sharp contrast as we then learn that her brother returns with G., convinced into believing that he didn’t rape her. 

In the continued letters to her brother, she recounts what she’s done with her life since he’s disappeared. This includes further recurrences of toxicity such as missing out on an internship because she wouldn’t respond to a coordinator’s advances. How even though the coordinator was made to leave, it was all kept silent, and he just moved to another position.

Despite the extreme difficulty of trying to break into journalism and the struggle of working endless temporary jobs, the protagonist eventually gets a job at a newspaper. With a boss who is very friendly and who lets her write about the progressive content she is interested in, she is finally feeling positive. However, the friendliness of her boss gradually turns into unwanted advances. Tortured by the conflict of not wanting to lose the job she worked so hard to get and wanted so much, she makes up excuses and avoids going to work. Ultimately though, after returning, and receiving the direct threat of losing her job, she caves; she has sex with him, becoming complicit in the unbreakable system. However, if society is going to continually violate her, at least this way she can give herself the impression of consent, she can attempt to reverse the violence in her mind and use it to work even - to do good. In a system of contradictions, where nearly every action or choice is rigged, she can at the very least regain autonomy.

Because society rapes you, it's true, over and over again - but it also gives you wine. Poison and antidote from the same hand. And I am no longer the princess in the castle; it is in society that I want to be, without judgment for poisons, which are antidotes, which are poisons. Which are antidotes.

Following this, reflecting on these paradoxes while drinking alone, she grapples with the choice she made alone in a pub and compares herself to her father drinking away his troubles. However, she is then inspired to take a different path to her father - to direct her anger in the face of fear upwards rather than downwards. She then leaves the pub, goes to G.,’s address and with red spray paint, writes ‘RAPIST’ on the front of the house. This then becomes the first small step towards liberation, ultimately leading to her finding the strength to leave her job, to start again with the help of friends who become family. Replacing the brother and friend who betrayed her, who she knows now she can’t negate, but equally, she can accept what happened and move on.

Because the point is this. I, at most, can reveal the presence of the unknown, of the X… I can tell you what rape is… I can tell you why we don’t report it… I can tell you that there are no rotten apples, that the whole orchard is rotten…

But now, brother, it’s up to you. It’s up to all of you. If you guys will want it, if you will have the courage it takes to break a conspiratorial (and, yes, gratuitously violent) silence.

Otherwise, we will do it without you.

Valentina Mira has a degree in Law. She worked as a rider, in a call center and as a waitress while writing for various newspapers and websites, including manifesto and Corriere della Sera. Between 2017 and 2018 she curated the culture page of Romanista. X is her first book. 

Valentina Maini was born in Bologna in 1987. She completed her PhD in Comparative Literature between Bologna and Paris and has published short stories in retabloid, TerraNullius, Atti Impuri, Horizonte, and other magazines. Some of her articles have appeared in Poetiche, La Deleuziana, and Classiques Garnier. With her collection of poetry, Casa Rotta (2016), she won the Anna Osti literary prize. She translates from French and from English into Italian.

Synopsis

It’s 2007 and we’re in Bilbao, worn out by the final blows of Basque terrorism. Gorane and Jokin are twenty-five year old twins and children of ETA militants. Raised without rules, they take opposing and complementary directions: compliant and passive to everything, Jokin, a heroin-addict drummer, seems to follow in his parents’ footsteps, while Gorane, ambiguous and introverted, pulls away seeking refuge in an abstract world. When Jokin runs away and their parents become involved in a tragic event, Gorane finds herself prey to strange hallucinations of her parents. Meanwhile in Paris, Jokin struggles with his attraction to the mysterious Germana, yet, despite the distance, the twins’ lives seem destined to never separate and it will be a French writer’s novel that reconnects them.

The Melee is a polyphonic work; a world that connects reality to our most recondite dreams, a world where the only driving force seems to be blind violence. Can freedom reveal itself to be an instrument of torture, and can empathy that resists absolutism prevail in the face of trauma? Valentina Maini responds in the pages of this provocative debut and its web of stories connecting drug dealers, smugglers, psychiatrists, writers, cleaners and fortune tellers - and she does it with the conviction of Roberto Bolaño and Mathias Énard: looking chaos directly in the eye.

First place in the L’Indiscreto Quality Rankings - Classifica di Qualità - L'Indiscreto

Shortlisted for the Severino Cesari Debut Award 2020

Shortlisted for the Fondazione Mondadori Debut Award 2020

Chosen by Kobo in Their 50 Books to Defy and Survive the Year 2020 - View List Here

“What is great European literature today? The Melee by Valentina Maini has the range and complexity to fit the bill and the ambition to be part of it.”

Veronica Raimo (The Girl at the Door)

 “There are writers who, more than make their debut, burst onto the scene. By writing novels that play havoc with all the rules. Valentina Maini is one of them.”

Andrea Bajani (If You Kept a Record of Sins; Every Promise)

“Redolent of Clarice Lispector and Roberto Bolano, a haunted, captivating, poetic novel that tells the story of two children of ETA and their quest for life and the future under the tight rein of a true artist and her unique, visionary freedom of language.”

Marta Barone (Città sommersa)

“In The Melee, Valentina Maini unfurls a notable variety of textual typologies – reports, statements, recordings, a novel within the novel – showing that it is still possible to tell stories in an impressive, original manner.”

Wu Ming 2 (Q; Manituana; 54)

 “(An) important, composite, well-structured work with the pace of a classical 20th-century novel (...) an unexpected surprise if you consider that the author, already a great writer, was only born in 1987.”

Valeria Parrella, Grazia

“This rough, explosive, marvellous novel came out at the end of February. Impossible as it may seem given the structure and the quality of the writing, it marks the author’s debut.”

Francesco Targhetta (Perciò veniamo bene nele fotografie; Le vite potenziali)

“La mischia (The Melee) by Valentina Maini is what one might define as a dazzling debut. This in fact ishe first novel by a young author who, in 2016, published a poetry collection (Casa rotta - Broken Home - Arcipelago Itaca) and followed it up with short stories in a number of magazines. As a novel it’s both ambitious and powerful: it’s rare in contemporary Italian literature to read a book of such narrative and poetic complexity written in such a distinctive andfounder assured style, all the more so if it’s by a writer making her debut in the genre.”

Marco Mongelli (founder of 404: file not found),La Balena Bianca

“Compelling and enigmatic.”

Corriere della Sera, La Lettura

“The Meleeis a moving book [...] a hypnotic novel that has the reader constantly opening their eyes wide with surprise at such an intense, convincing debut.”

Silvia Castellani, Satisfiction

“(...) a veritable contemporary epic as Roberto Bolaño might have conceived it, animated by a style at once shamanic and sartorial, capable of returning heterogeneity to unity.”

Minima et Moralia

“A debut that stands out for its lack of uncertainties and the glittering polyphony on which it’s based.”

Il Giornale di Sicilia

“Though The Meleebelongs to the category of novels that chronicle the life of a family, it is given a peculiarity of its own by the strength of the characters (...) explored with a reflective maturity that, applied to this story in particular, draws out the existential dynamics – small shared truths – that are common to the majority of people.”

Il manifesto, Alias

“Very tight writing, almost furious storytelling.”

Corriere della Sera, Io Donna

“Maini’s powerful, sophisticated debut novel reveals a mature, mindful command of language and storytelling.”

Mangialibri.it

“Apparently ‘out of control’ but actually very controlled indeed in its labyrinthine, sophisticated structure.”

Avvenire

“Can liberty – a fragile and illusory conquest of our time – prove to be an instrument of torture that conceals prisons that we hadn’t predicted? Valentina Maini answers the question through the pages of this amazing debut novel (...) and does so with the same decision as Roberto Bolaño and Mathias Énard: by looking chaos straight in the eye.”

Altritaliani.net

“[Valentina Maini] demonstrates enviable maturity (...) a debut with a bang.”

Il Piccolo di Trieste

“Not for a moment did I think I was reading an author’s first novel.”

CriticaLetteraria.org

“(...) brilliant, weighty writing (...) an Italian novel that crosses national borders to become international, in setting and in style.”

Sulromanzo.it