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In this gripping coming-of-age novel, a group of young people’s lives and passions collide in unexpected ways as World War II transforms Italy and England. Central Italy, on the eve of the Second World War. A group of young Italians find themselves in the midst of what will soon become a civil war. Among them is Stefano Portelli, a hopeful lawyer with a head full of utopias, in love with Eleonora. And there is his sister-in-law Nina, secretly linked to Sergio, a partisan leader. Other lives run parallel to theirs: that of Alastair Ormiston, an English Royal Air Force Pilot, who adores Virginia Woolf''s books and dreams of the ideal companion. And that of Edna, his best friend who, in a London bombed by the Nazis, discovers herself and her happiness. If their paths intersect in a shocking way, shuffling the cards of history, it will be through the work of a destiny greater than them, burning them in a bonfire where everything is consumed--joy and pain together.
About the author
Mario Fortunato was born in Cirò, Calabria, Italy. For three decades he worked as a literary critic for the Italian current affairs magazine L’Espresso and continues to work as a columnist for the German daily paper Süddeutsche Zeitung. He has been a member of the Italian Cinema Commission of the Ministry of Culture and the International Advisory Board of the Christopher Isherwood Foundation, is a founder of the Napoli Teatro Festival Italia, and director of the Italian Cultural Institute in London. He is also a former director of the Antonio Ratti Foundation and a former columnist for The Guardian and Le Monde. In addition to writing novels such as South (Other Press, 2023), he has translated into Italian works by Evelyn Waugh, Virginia Woolf, and Henry James.
Julia MacGibbon has translated works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, including Marta Barone’s Sunken City. She lives near Rome.
