Domenico Starnone – författare

Absolutely gripping from start to finish… a really stunning book.—Victoria HislopTies 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.

FROM THE AUTHOR OF THE INTERNATIONAL BOOKER LONGLISTED AND WINNER OF THE STREGA PRIZE THE HOUSE ON VIA GEMITOA FINANCIAL TIMES BOOK OF THE WEEK “What is most thrilling about Trust is its overwhelming sense of unease... the selves we ‘make’ for ourselves and others may be the most dangerous of the stories we tell.” —Times Literary Supplement“Compelling… One of Italy’s most accomplished novelists.” —The Guardian “Starnone packs a huge amount into a small compass.” —The Sunday Times 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.

“Starnone uses languages the way a great painter works with colour.” —Jhumpa Lahiri“One of Italy’s most accomplished novelists.” —The Guardian Imagine a child, a daydreamer, always gazing out of the window. His grandmother, busy in the kitchen, keeps an eye on him. The child stares at a balcony on the opposite building, watching the black-haired girl as she dances her reckless dance. For a love like this, a child can push himself to extreme feats. He can turn into explorer or cabin boy, cowboy or castaway; he can fight duels to the death, or even master an unfamiliar language. His grandmother is not articulate, but does not lack imagination, and her love for the boy is immeasurable. She tells him about the entrance to the underworld, engraving indelible images in her nephew’s mind. An irresistible book, as sharp as the swords of fantasy hidden under the bed, as precious as a family jewel, in which the discovery of love and the discovery of death follow each other, marking the end of childhood.

LONGLISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE 2024“Starnone uses languages the way a great painter works with colour, conjuring the illusion of three dimensions from a blank flat surface.” —Jhumpa Lahiri “One of Italy’s most accomplished novelists.” —The Guardian “Masterly.” —Times Literary Supplement The modest apartment on Via Gemito smells of paint and white spirit. The furniture is pushed up against the wall to create a make-shift studio, and drying canvases must be moved off the beds each night.Federì, a railway clerk, is convinced that, if he didn’t have a family to feed, he’d be a world-famous painter. Talented, ambitious, and frustrated, his life is marked by bitter disappointment. His long-suffering wife and their four sons bear the brunt. Years later, his first-born son will tell the story of a man he spent his whole life trying not to resemble. Narrated against the background of a Naples still marked by WWII and first published in Italy over 20 years ago, The House on Via Gemito is a masterpiece of contemporary Italian literature.

FROM THE AUTHOR OF THE INTERNATIONAL BOOKER LONGLISTED AND WINNER OF THE STREGA PRIZE THE HOUSE ON VIA GEMITO“Starnone uses languages the way a great painter works with colour, conjuring the illusion of three dimensions from a blank flat surface.”—Jhumpa Lahiri “Compelling… One of Italy’s most accomplished novelists.”—The Guardian "Trick is a chillingly weird chamber piece - a very tricksy treat.”—The Times 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 centre 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.

FROM THE AUTHOR OF THE INTERNATIONAL BOOKER LONGLISTED AND WINNER OF THE STREGA PRIZE THE HOUSE ON VIA GEMITOA FINANCIAL TIMES BOOK OF THE WEEK “What is most thrilling about Trust is its overwhelming sense of unease... the selves we ‘make’ for ourselves and others may be the most dangerous of the stories we tell.” —Times Literary Supplement“Compelling… One of Italy’s most accomplished novelists.” —The Guardian “Starnone packs a huge amount into a small compass.” —The Sunday Times 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.

A slim, virtuoso novel about age and imagination, by one of Italy’s greatest contemporary writers82-year-old Nicola has spent his entire life telling stories, and becoming very, very good at it. In words, with his pen, in the notebook he carries with him everywhere, he records life’s minutiae, its ephemera, those almost imperceptible atoms of existence that most of us barely notice. Recording the universe in each grain of sand has become second nature to Nicola. But there is always something that escapes, remaining on the margins, intuited rather than identified. And this fact, for Nicola, is a source of deep anxiety and a growing sense of failure.Now, ensconced in a house on the dunes south of Rome, Nicola spends his mornings writing, watching the waves, and observing Lu, a store clerk in her twenties whose graceful canoeing stirs faint echoes of his mother. As Nicola reflects on the women who shaped him and the passions he has never outgrown, he finds himself drawn into the intrigues of the small seaside town. He will end by embarking on an improbable and ill-advised kayak adventure of his own with Lu’s young son, as Starnone brings his tale about memory and reinvention to an unexpected conclusion.

Livet på via Gemito av Domenico Starnone är en prisad skildring av en mörk barndom – och av staden Neapel. Fadern är en enkel järnvägsarbetare som är övertygad att han – om han inte hade en familj att försörja – skulle vara en världskänd konstnär. Den lilla lägenheten på Via Gemito är proppfull av dukar, färg och penslar. Familjen får knappt plats . . . ”Ett mästerverk.” – The New York Times