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 perhaps it has already shattered, and nobody is willing to acknowledge the fact. Domenico Starnone’s thirteenth work of fiction is a powerful short novel about relationships, family, love, and the ineluctable consequences of one’s actions. Known as a consummate stylist and beloved as a talented storyteller, Domenico Starnone is the winner of Italy’s most prestigious literary award, the Strega. “The leanest, most understated and emotionally powerful novel by Domenico Starnone.”―The New York Times

Ties

Literature & Fiction

STARNONE, Domenico

Literary

Europa Editions

Sharp, succinct storytelling and breathtaking prose combine in this new novel by the author of Ties, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and a Kirkus Reviews and Sunday Times Best Book of the Year. Trick is a stylish drama about ambition, family, and old-age that goes beyond the ordinary and predictable. Imagine a duel between two men. One, Daniele Mallarico, is a successful illustrator who, in the twilight of his years, feels that his reputation and his artistic prowess are fading. The other, Mario, is Daniele's four-year-old grandson. Daniele has been living in a cold northern city for years, in virtual solitude, focusing obsessively on his work, when his daughter asks if he would come to Naples for a few days and babysit Mario while she and her husband attend a conference. Shut inside his childhood home―an apartment in the center of Naples that is filled with the ghosts of Mallarico's past―grandfather and grandson match wits as Daniele heads toward a reckoning with his own ambitions and life choices. Outside the apartment, pulses Naples, a wily, violent, and passionate city whose influence can never be shaken. Trick is a gripping, brilliantly devised drama, "an extremely playful literary composition," as Jhumpa Lahiri describes it in her introduction, by the Strega Prize-winning novelist whom many consider to be one of Italy's greatest living writers.

Trick

Product Description 
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 secrets, they break up. Not long after, Pietro meets Nadia, falls in love, and proposes. But the shadow of the secret he confessed to Teresa haunts him, and Teresa herself periodically reappears, standing at the crossroads, it seems, of every major moment in his life. Or is it he who seeks her out? 
Starnone is a master storyteller and a novelist of the highest order. His gaze is trained unwaveringly on the fault lines in our public personas and the complexities of our private selves. Trust asks how much we are willing to bend to show the world our best side, knowing full well that when we are at our most vulnerable we are also at our most dangerous. 
 Review 
Praise for Trust 
★ “Richly nuanced while also understated, Starnone’s latest appearance in English is a novel to be savored.”—Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review) 
“A short, sharp novel that cuts like a scalpel to the core of its characters... Starnone has earned a reader’s trust with another agile analysis of frail humanity.”—Los Angeles Times 
“Translation shows me how to work with new words, how to experiment with new styles and forms, how to take greater risks, how to structure and layer my sentences in different ways.”—Jhumpa Lahiri on the joy of translation as discovery, Lit Hub 
“A sweeping examination of aging, love, and success... This is the third of Starnone’s novels that Lahiri has translated over the last six years, and her deft hand seamlessly reveals Starnone’s masterful narrative at every turn.”—Booklist 
“Starnone (Trick) returns with an elegant story of a man’s lifelong struggle to perfect his public persona while hiding a secret.”—Publishers Weekly 
“Absolutely brilliant! I have to say: Jhumpa Lahiri has done an amazing job. She is the best translator a writer could wish for.”—RTE Radio 
“An Italian master gives it a suspenseful twist in this vibrant novel that’s equal parts Endless Love, la dolce vita, and unreliable narration….A rip of a read.”—Oprah Daily 
“Indirection like that, stirring up terrific curiosity, proves one of the novel’s best gambits…I’d call it the best of Lahiri’s Starnone essays — a fine fit for the best of his recent creative surge.”—Washington Post 
“Acclaimed Italian novelist and National Book Award finalist Starnone’s newest novel explores vulnerability, relationships, and the gulf between our public and private selves.”—The Millions 
“Starnone is a masterful storyteller.”—Reading in Translation 
“Electrifying.”—Financial Times 
“With a few deft strokes of his concentrated prose, [Starnone] tears down the curtains, blinding his audience with daylight.”—Los Angeles Review of Books 
“The book that taught me what translation was.”—Jhumpa Lahiri, The New Yorker 
Praise for Domenico Starnone 
“One of Italy’s most accomplished novelists.”—Tim Parks, The Guardian 
“Starnone packs a huge amount into a small compass. Engrossing.”—The Sunday Times 
“Their relationship, perfectly captured by Starnone’s precise writing, gives the novel a rich foundation to allow for a juxtaposition of the old and the new, the rigid and the silly, while also providing readers with moments of pure comic relief, marked by the characters’ signature, witty stichomythia.”—Vox 
“Short and emotionally astute, a shrewd mix of humor and dread that keeps you reading.”—The Chicago

Trust

This extraordinary Strega Prize-winning novel confirms Domenico Starnone's reputation as one of Italy's greatest living writers. Told against the backdrop of Naples in the 1960s, a city that itself becomes a vivid character in this lush, atmospheric novel, The House on Via Gemito is a masterpiece of Italian fiction, one that is steeped in Neapolitan lore. A modest apartment in Via Gemito smelling of paint and turpentine. Its furniture pushed up against the wall to create a make-shift studio. Drying canvases moved from bed to floor each night. Federí, the father, a railway clerk, is convinced that he possesses great artistic promise. If it weren't for the family he must feed and the jealousy of his fellow Neapolitan artists, nothing would stop him from becoming a world-famous painter. Ambitious and frustrated, genuinely talented but also arrogant and resentful, Federí is scarred by constant disappointment. He is a larger-than-life character, a liar, a fabulist, and his fantasies shape the lives of those around him, especially his young son, Mimi, short for Domenico, who will spend a lifetime trying to get out from under his father's shadow. Starnone, a finalist for the National Book Award with Trick, author of New York Times notable book of the year, Ties, and the critically acclaimed Trust, takes readers beyond the slim, novella-length works for which he is known by American readers to create a vast fresco of family, fatherhood, and modern Naples.

The House on Via Gemito

Absolutely gripping from start to finish… a really stunning book. 
―Victoria Hislop\nTies is the story of a marriage. Like many marriages, this one has been subject to strain, to attrition, to the burden of routine. Yet it has survived intact. Or so things appear. The rupture in Vanda and Aldo's marriage lies years in the past, but if one looks closely enough, the fissures and fault lines are evident. Their marriage is a cracked vase that may shatter at the slightest touch. Or perhaps it has already shattered, and nobody is willing to acknowledge the fact. 
Domenico Starnone's thirteenth work of fiction is a powerful short novel about relationships, family, love, and the ineluctable consequences of one's actions. Known as a consummate stylist and beloved as a talented storyteller, Domenico Starnone is the winner of Italy's most prestigious literary award The Strega.

Contemporary

A FINANCIAL TIMES 'BEST BOOK OF THE WEEK' CHOICE 
A sharp, breath-taking exploration of love and relationships. 
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. In this way, Teresa thinks, they will remain intimately connected forever. 
A few days after sharing their shameful secrets, they break up. Not long after, Pietro meets Nadia, falls in love, and proposes. But the shadow of the secret he confessed to Teresa haunts him, and Teresa herself periodically reappears, standing at the crossroads of every major moment in his life. Or is it he who seeks her out? 
Trust asks how much we are willing to bend to show the world our best side, knowing full well that when we are at our most vulnerable we are also at our most dangerous.

From Domenico Starnone, the Strega-prize winning author of Ties (2017), a stylish metaphysical novel about the art of teaching, the fear of terrorism, the sinuous paths that self-delusion lead us down, and the travails of growing old. Mild-mannered retired teacher Domenico Stasi learns that Nina, a former student of his, is being held as a suspected terrorist. His first thought is to contact her–only her innocence can reassure him that his teachings have not contributed to the creation of a monster. But instead of the comforting proclamations of innocence Stasi was hoping to hear, Nina coolly alludes to her guilt. She then entrusts him with a simple task that soon turns deadly serious. A lethal game has now been put into play and nothing can stop its course. Yet matters may not be entirely as they appear. Into the story steps Domenico Starnone–author, retired teacher himself, character in his own fictional world–and First Execution becomes an exhilarating voyage to that murky terrain where fiction and real life mix. Central to this novel is one of history's most enduring philosophical dilemmas: to what extent do we bear the responsibility for actions taken or not taken? Domenico Starnone will discover through his encounter with Domenico Stasi that even a lifetime of commitment to firm principles cannot provide an unassailable answer to this question, nor can it appease a man's guilty conscience. Indeed, in this electrifying literary novel, only one thing appears certain: no one is innocent.

First Execution

Nos fautes inavouées

Genre Fiction

FAYARD

Via Gemito

Haymon Verlag

Ataduras / Ties (Spanish Edition)

Lumen

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by STARNONE, Domenico. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by STARNONE, Domenico

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by STARNONE, Domenico. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Ties

Trick

Trust

The House on Via Gemito

Ties

Trust

First Execution

Nos fautes inavouées

Via Gemito

Ataduras / Ties (Spanish Edition)