Europa Editions – serie

*A NUMBER 1 INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER**Jane Garvey and Fi Glover's book club pick*Violette Toussaint is the caretaker at a cemetery in a small town in Bourgogne. Her daily life is lived to the rhythms of the hilarious and touching confidences of random visitors and her colleagues—three gravediggers, three groundskeepers, and a priest.Violette’s routine is disrupted one day by the arrival of police chief Julien Seul, wishing to deposit his mother’s ashes on the gravesite of a complete stranger. Julien is not the only one to guard a painful secret: his mother’s story of clandestine love breaks through Violette’s carefully constructed defences to reveal the tragic loss of her daughter, and her steely determination to find out who is responsible.  The funny, moving, intimately told story of a woman who believes obstinately in happiness, Fresh Water for Flowers brings out the exceptional and the poetic in the ordinary. A delightful, atmospheric, absorbing tale.“An appealing indulgence in nature, food and drink, and, above all, friendships.”—The GuardianWhat readers are saying:“I'd read this book over and over again”“One of those books that you don’t want to end”“Absolutely amazing story”“This is one of the BEST BOOKS EVER WRITTEN!”“A really moving story of hope love and determination”“this is one of the most life-affirming books I have read”

"A DISTINCTLY KOREAN TAKE ON GREAT EXPECTATIONS." Financial TimesA woman sells her daughter to a passing beekeeper for two jars of honey. A baby weighing fifteen pounds is born in the depths of winter but named “Girl of Spring”. A storm brings down the roof of a ramshackle restaurant to reveal a hidden fortune. These are just some of the events that set Myeong-Kwan's beautifully crafted, wild world in motion.Set in a remote village in South Korea, Whale follows the lives of its linked characters: Geumbok, who has been chasing an indescribable thrill ever since she first saw a whale crest in the ocean; her mute daughter, Chunhui, who communicates with elephants; and a one-eyed woman who controls honeybees with a whistle.Brimming with surprises and wicked humour, Whale is an adventure-satire of epic proportions, by one of international literature’s the most original voices.

*SHORTLISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE 2020**LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD 2020*“If ever there was a book that needs to be read more than once, this is it.”—ArtsHub“A book that keeps on giving.”—Brona’s Books“Extraordinary.”—The Irish Times“Compelling, delightful and powerful.”—David’s Book WorldA family story about the unbreakable connection between the living and the deadSet in Iran in the decade following the 1979 Islamic Revolution, this moving, richly imagined novel is narrated by the ghost of Bahar, a thirteen-year-old girl, whose family is compelled to flee their home in Tehran for a new life in a small village, hoping in this way to preserve both their intellectual freedom and their lives. But they soon find themselves caught up in the post-revolutionary chaos that sweeps across their ancient land and its people. Bahar’s mother, after a tragic loss, will embark on a long, eventful journey in search of meaning.The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree speaks of the power of imagination when confronted with cruelty, and of our human need to make sense of trauma through the ritual of storytelling itself. Through her unforgettable characters, Azar weaves a timely and timeless story that juxtaposes the beauty of an ancient, vibrant culture with the brutality of an oppressive political regime."Not only richly imaginative but also emotionally powerful." - 1st Reading's Blog“Her novel ... embodies Iranian life in a state of constant “oscillation”, bringing into play “opposing poles” — like life and death, religion and politics ... — to evoke the extent of damage by an oppressive political regime.” - The Indian Express

***A CRIME READS BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR***An addictive and nuanced narrative about conflict-rife Colombia.A boy witnesses a violent confrontation in a remote part of town in the state of Cauca, Colombia. Minutes later, someone arrives at the scene to clear up all trace of the incident. No one in town claims to have heard or seen anything, and yet an anonymous accusation launches a dangerous investigation that unfolds within the corrupt world of the Christian churches of Latin America. A story that urgently reveals inequality and violence that govern an entire country, The Night Will Be Long is a devastatingly humorous thriller that will appeal to fans of Roberto Bolaño and Fernanda Melchor’s Hurricane Season.Santiago Gamboa’s fascinating characters introduce an addictive and nuanced narrative about conflict-rife Colombia.

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.

THE DEFINITIVE STUDY OF OSCAR WILDE’S POSTHUMOUS REPUTATION, WRITTEN BY WILDE’S ONLY GRANDSON"FASCINATING"—STEPHEN FRYA feat of storytelling and scholarship, After Oscar tells the story of Os[1]car's wife Constance and his sons; his lovers, friends, and enemies; the afterlife of De Profundis; sightings from beyond the grave; the fate of the Wilde estate; and Oscar’s contemporary status as a gay icon.One of the most important works on Wilde in over fifty years, After Oscar exposes decades of sensationalist conjecture surrounding the Wilde family, and documents a century of homophobia within the British establishment. Illuminating and heartbreaking, Holland has written a book that will amuse, infuriate, fascinate, and shock. Readers beware—you’re in for a Wilde ride.

From her home in Paris, Lina recalls the story of three women whose lives unfold in the conservative city of Barranquilla in Colombia. Amongst parties at the Country Club and strolls along the promenade in Puerto Colombia, unfurls a story of sensuality supressed by violence; a narrative of oppression in which Dora, Catalina and Beatriz are victims of a patriarchal system living in and among the fragile threads of the fabric of society. In Lina’s obsessive recounting of the past, this masterful novel transforms anecdotes of a life into an absolute view of the world, a profound panorama of Colombian society towards the end of the 50s.Written from personal memories and historical research, this is a novel that is both precise and poetic, a novel that immortalises—from the distant perspective of its narrator—the events that took place in a small seaside town.Distancing herself from her contemporaries of the Latin-American literary boom with a boldly feminist narrative, Marvel Moreno has created a world that both mirrors the close-up, private lives of the people of Barranquilla and the human condition itself.*WHAT NETGALLEY READERS ARE SAYING*"Just delightful.""Full of a fierce fightback against generations of misogyny and toxic masculinity. This book is powerful.""A wonderfully written and sensually feminist novel.""I'd read Moreno again like a shot.""There's something deliciously unexpected, even subversive about Moreno's prose."

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.

A gripping historical thriller that bridges the horrors of World War II and the geopolitical complexities of the 1980sShlomo Libowitz and Anton Epstein, two Jewish prisoners subjected to horrific experiments in a Nazi concentration camp, survive the unimaginable. Decades later, their lives converge again as they hunt Hans Lichtblau, the SS officer who tormented them, now operating in the shadowy world of Cold War geopolitics. Their pursuit takes them from the ashes of Europe to the jungles of Central America, where justice and revenge blur against the backdrop of CIA conspiracies and a haunting past. But one life may be too short to settle all accounts, and Anton and Shlomo’s belated revenge is also a race against time...With vivid characters and a masterful blend of fact and fiction, perfectly balanced between two continents and two eras, A Feel for the Iron confronts the moral ambiguities of vengeance and the inescapable echoes of history.

SOON TO BE A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE DIRECTED BY MARTIN SCORSESE, STARRING LEONARDO DICAPRIO AND JENNIFER LAWRENCEA Spectator and a Refinery29 Best Book of the Year "Like a Kafka story and a Wes Anderson movie combined."―LiteraryHub A couple find themselves at a fading, grand European hotel full of eccentric and sometimes unsettling patrons in this allegorical story that examines the significance of shifting desires and the uncertainty of realityAn unnamed American couple travels to a strange, snowy European city to adopt a baby. It’s a difficult journey that leaves the wife, who is struggling with cancer, desperately weak, and her husband worries that her illness will prevent the orphanage from releasing their child.On arrival, the couple checks into the cavernous and eerily deserted Borgarfjaroasysla Grand Imperial Hotel where the bar is always open and the lobby populated with an enigmatic cast of characters ranging from an ancient, flamboyant chanteuse to a debauched businessman to an enigmatic faith healer. Nothing is as it seems in this baffling, frozen world, and the more the couple struggles to claim their baby, the less they seem to know about their marriage, themselves, and life itself.

A few years ago, Antoine Compagnon was asked to host a radio broadcast, every day for an entire summer, on a formidable subject: Michel de Montaigne. From that experience came this engaging and entertaining book, A Summer with Montaigne. An intelligent and thought-provoking treatise in forty chapters that will introduce readers unfamiliar with Montaigne to his unique brilliance and remind those who already know Montaigne’s work of its vitality, force, and enduring timeliness.Compagnon breathes life into the musings of Montaigne, approaching his subject not as the recluse many imagine him to have been, but rather a multi-faceted individual of complex thought and astonishing analytical prowess. Once the mayor of Bordeaux, Montaigne was a committed spirit of his time, advising his powerful contemporaries and always in touch with the questions and concerns of the moment, of which many remain pressing today. Composed over a period of twenty years, Montaigne’s Essays deal with timeless themes. From the problems posed by religion, war, power and friendship to humankind’s ridiculous weaknesses, Montaigne’s Essays remain a moving commentary on what it means to be a human being in any age.

“It is to the Greeks that we turn when we are sick of the vagueness, of the confusion, of our own age.”—Virginia WoolfDiscover a new passion for a very old language, a language that can express what can’t be said in any other, and thrillingly relevant to our lives today. A language that rewards desire by giving its own modal verb; bequeaths lovers a special case beyond singular and plural; prioritises mindfulness and dynamic presence through its very own grammar. A language that can transform our relationship to time and to those around us.A love song to the language of the greatest poets, philosophers, adventurers, lovers, and generals that ever lived. In Marcolongo’s words: “Greek has been the longest and most beautiful romance of my life.” Whether or not readers are familiar with ancient Greek, they will find Marcolongo’s boundless enthusiasm for her subject utterly infectious.

October 1812, Napoleon enters Moscow. The Russians have set fire to the city, soon it will be reduced to a pile of ash. The Emperor equivocates, decides to turn back. This is the beginning of the retreat from Russia, a page of history that has become legendary for its degree of suffering and horror, but also for the heroic acts that took place.Two hundred years later, Sylvain Tesson, accompanied by four friends (two Russians and two French), decides to follow the route of the retreat. Perched on two Soviet Ural sidecar motorcycles, they will rejoin Paris from Moscow, guided only by the spectres of the two hundred thousand soldiers who died through cold, starvation, and in battle. Twenty five hundred miles travelled in a wild escapade to salute the ghosts of history, across the white plains of Russia.

A moving and intimate account of survival, resilience, and reconstruction.Paris. January 7, 2015, two terrorists attacked the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo. Philippe Lançon, seriously wounded, was among the survivors. This intense life experience upends his relationship to the world, to writing, to reading, to love and to friendship. It took him a year before he could return to writing, a year of frequent reconstructive surgeries, to work through his experiences and their aftermath. As he attempts to reconstruct his life on the page, Lançon rereads Proust, Thomas Mann, Kafka, and others in search of guidance and healing. Disturbance is not an essay on terrorism nor is it a witness’s account of Charlie Hebdo, and it’s certainly not a “feel good book.” The attack and what followed make up a small portion of Lançon’s narrative, which instead seeks to provide the most honest and intimate reproduction possible of the interior experience of a man who was a victim, who suffered a “war wound” in a country “at peace.” Disturbance is a book about transformation, about one man’s shifting relationship to time, to truth, and to his own body.

25M copies of Elena Ferrante's books sold worldwide“This is my last column, after a year that has scared and inspired me.”With these words, Elena Ferrante, the bestselling author of My Brilliant Friend, bid farewell to her year-long collaboration with the Guardian. For a full year she penned short pieces, the subjects of which were suggested by editors at the Guardian, turning the writing process into a kind of prolonged interlocution; the subjects ranged from first love to climate change, from enmity among women to the adaptation of her novels to film and TV. As she said in her final column: “I have written as an author of novels, taking on matters that are important to me and that—if I have the will and the time—I’d like to develop within real narrative mechanisms.”Here, then, are the seeds of possible future novels, the ruminations of an internationally beloved author, and the abiding preoccupations of a writer who has been called “one of the great novelists of our time” (The New York Times). Gathered together for the first time and accompanied by an entirely new introduction written by Elena Ferrante and by Andrea Ucini’s intelligent, witty, and beautiful illustrations, this is a must for all Ferrante fans.

WINNER OF THE POLARI FIRST BOOK PRIZE 2017“A remarkable debut.” - The Huffington Post“Freewheeling and incendiary.” - London Review of Books“…vibrant, wrenching début novel...sensuous and caustic, full of smoke and blood.” - The New YorkerA Middle-Eastern capital caught in the revolutionary wave of the Arab Spring. A day in the life of a young man disillusioned with both East and West and struggling to find a place for himself in a society ruled by hypocrisy and contradictions. Rasa works as an interpreter for Western journalists by day and divides his nights between the Guapa, an underground nightclub where the city’s clandestine LGBT community congregates, and his secret lover Taymour. Every night Taymour sneaks into the house Rasa shares with his overbearing grandmother, the woman who raised him. When she finds them in bed together on the eve of Taymour’s wedding day, all hell breaks loose.That same day Rasa learns his best friend, the famous drag queen Majid, has been arrested by the police. Unable to go home, afraid for Majid’s fate, and heartbroken by Taymour’s determination to keep living a double life, Rasa’s fragile balance collapses, while all around him the brief, intense season of public protest is cut short by the regime’s repression and the rapid rise of the hard-line Islamist movement.“This immensely readable novel is fluent, passionate and emotionally honest. Equally astute in its analysis of Arab and American mores, the book’s characters are nuanced and dynamic; it gives fresh life to the maxim 'the personal is political'.” - The Guardian“Guapa offers an intimate, complex portrait of gay life in the Arab world, a subject rarely explored in fiction.” - Gay Times

THE NEW YORK TIMES' BEST BOOKS OF THE 21st CENTURY25M copies of Elena Ferrante's books sold worldwide“Stunning… the raging, torrential voice of the author is something rare.” — The New York TimesTHE BREAK-OUT NOVEL BY THE INTERNATIONALLY ACCLAIMED AUTHOR OF MY BRILLIANT FRIENDRarely have the foundations upon which our ideas of motherhood and womanhood rest been so candidly questioned. This compelling novel tells the story of one woman’s headlong descent into what she calls an “absence of sense” after being abandoned by her husband. Olga’s “days of abandonment” become a desperate, dangerous freefall into the darkest places of the soul as she roams the empty streets of a city that she has never learned to love. When she finds herself trapped inside the four walls of her apartment in the middle of a summer heat wave, Olga is forced to confront her ghosts, the potential loss of her own identity, and the possibility that life may never return to normal again.“Ferrante puts hammer to flesh and invites her reader to penetrate the page.” — Financial Times“Extraordinary.” — The London Review of Books

SHORTLISTED: THE DUBLIN LITERARY AWARDLONGLISTED: WOMENS' PRIZE FOR FICTION 2022A NOVEL OF DEVASTATING BEAUTY SET IN BUCHENWALD DURING THE SECOND WORLD WAR"A powerful and disturbing study in terrible lies and the human need to believe them." ANNIE PROULXMoving away from their lovely apartment in Munich isn’t nearly as wrenching an experience for Frau Greta Hahn as she had feared. Their new home is even lovelier than the one they left behind and life in Buchenwald would appear to be idyllic. Lying just beyond the forest that surrounds them is the looming presence of a work camp. Frau Hahn’s husband, SS Sturmbannführer Dietrich Hahn, has been assigned as the camp’s administrator.When Frau Hahn’s poor health leads her into an unlikely and poignant friendship with one of Buchenwald’s prisoners, Dr Lenard Weber, her naïve ignorance about what is going on so nearby is challenged. A decade earlier, Dr Weber had invented a machine believed that its subtle resonances might cure cancer. But does it really work? One way or another, it might save a life.A tour de force about the evils of obliviousness, Remote Sympathy compels us to question our continuing and wilful ability to look the other way in a world that is in thrall to the idea that everything–even facts and morals–is relative.

WINNER of the French Voices Grand Prize, Prix Ahmadou Kourouma, and Grand Prix du Roman MétisMohamed Mbougar Sarr’s searing and thought-provoking debut novel, Brotherhood takes place in the imaginary town of Kalep, where a fundamentalist Islamist government has spread its brutal authority.Under the regime of the so-called Brotherhood, two young people are publicly executed for having loved each other. In response, their mothers begin a secret correspondence, their only outlet for the grief they share and each woman’s personal reckoning with a leadership that would take her beloved child’s life.At the same time, spurred on by their indignation at what seems to be an escalation of The Brotherhood’s brutality, a band of intellectuals and free-thinkers seeks to awaken the conscience of the cowed populace and foment rebellion by publishing an underground newspaper. While they grapple with the implications of what they have done, the regime’s brutal leader begins a personal crusade to find the responsible parties, and bring them to his own sense of justice. In this brilliant analysis of tyranny and brutality, Mbougar Sarr explores the ways in which resistance and heroism can often give way to cowardice, all while giving voice to the moral ambiguities and personal struggles involved in each of his characters’ search to impose the values they hold most dear.

A COMPELLING STORY CELEBRATING THE RESILIENCE OF TWO WOMEN AS THEY NAVIGATE WHAT REMAINS A STRONGLY PATRIARCHAL NIGERIA“I absolutely loved his book. Nwabulu and Julie are incredible, fully formed and fully flaw, characters that walk straight off the page and nestle in your heart as you read on.”―Simon Savidge, The Frank MagazineNwabulu has been a housemaid since the age of ten but her dreams of becoming a typist are never weakened by the endless chores she is tasked with by her employers. She has fallen in love with a rich man’s son.Julie is a modern woman, educated and independent. She has no intention of becoming love-struck Eugene’s second wife but allows herself to enjoy his extravagant gifts.When dramatic events force Nwabulu and Julie into a dank room, the two women relate the stories of their contrasting experiences as they await their fate. Set against four decades of Nigerian history, The Son of the House is a stunning debut pulsing with vitality and intense human drama.

The Gospel according to AmélieJesus is perhaps the most universally known figure in the Western world, yet he remains one of the most obscure. In her reinterpretation of the story of the Passion and crucifixion, Nothomb gives voice to a transgressive Messiah, the son of God portrayed as deeply human. Not so much because of his broken chastity vows, rather because of his inability to forgive himself for the pointless and sadistic mise-en-scène that is the Passion. It all starts with the farcical trial at the court of Pontius Pilate. When the witnesses for the prosecution stand up one by one, they turn out to be, paradoxically, the very ones who were healed by Jesus’ miracles, from the disgruntled beggar no longer able to solicit alms, to the man who, freed from satanic possession, now finds his life fatally boring. As the familiar, harrowing tale unfolds in all its dramatic intensity, Nothomb veers from the tragic to the comic, from deep compassion to cold mercilessness. She distils the essence of life down to its basic components – love, death and thirst – revealing that real human strength resides in the body, not in the spirit.

As a young woman, Else made two promises to herself: to live life to the fullest and to have a child with every man she loves. You Are Not Like Other Mothers tells the stories of the men in her life—husbands, companions, lovers and emissaries of a world in which men repeatedly prove themselves inadequate. It also tells the stories of Peter, Bettina, and Angelika, Else’s three children.Set during World War I and then the roaring twenties and the advent of Nazism and, for Else, exile in Bulgaria. But these dark years are also a time of experimentation, during which Else and the people in her life explore alternative modes of interpersonal relationships. All these stories and their characters are held together by the forceful figure of a woman who is larger than life.But the indomitable Else will make a most human mistake when she tries to hide the real extent of the Nazi tragedy from her children and, instead of protecting them, she brings disaster down upon her family.

How did Danny die?On a summer’s day in 1955, the drowned body of young Danny Masters is discovered by three of his teenage friends: Alexander, heir to the country estate that neighbours the village, and siblings Lennie and Tom, whose father is land agent to the Richmond family. Lennie is in love with volatile Alexander, but is he also in love or merely playing with her? Alexander’s mother has been a widow for less than a year, yet her husband’s brother seems always to be by her side. In the weeks that follow the tragic drowning, the river begins to give up its secrets. As the circumstances surrounding Danny’s death emerge, relationships and bonds develop, and other stories gradually come to the surface, threatening to destroy an entire way of life.

SHORTLISTED: EBRD LITERATURE PRIZE 2022“If you want to get inside the head of modern, young Russia, read Filipenko.”—SVETLANA ALEXIEVICH (Nobel Prize winner, 2015)A heart-wrenching novel exploring both personal and collective memory spanning Russian history from Stalin's terror to the present day.Tatiana Alexeyevna is 90 years old and she’s losing her memory. To find her way in her Soviet-era apartment block, she resorts to painting red crosses on the doors leading back to her apartment. But she still remembers the past in vivid detail.Alexander, a young man whose life has been brutally torn in two, would like nothing better than to forget the tragic events that have brought him to Minsk. When he moves into the flat next door to Tatiana’s, he’s cornered by the loquacious old lady. Reluctant at first, he’s soon drawn into Tatiana’s life story – one told urgently, before her memories of the Russian 20th century and its horrors are wiped out.The two forge an unlikely friendship, a pact against forgetting giving rise to a new sense of hope in the future. Deeply moving, with flashes of humour, Red Crosses is a shining narrative in the tradition of the great Russian novel.

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.

THE MYTHS SURROUNDING THE WORLD’S FAVOURITE DISH, DEBUNKEDDid Marco Polo bring pasta back from China, or is that a myth? How did the Neapolitan “macharoni” turn into the ubiquitous spaghetti?Is it even an Italian dish? Hundreds of shapes and thousands of recipes give expression to the culture and products of the country’s regions. But spaghetti with tomato sauce remains Italy’s identity dish par excellence. Massimo Montanari goes in search of the dish’s true origins, tracing its history along the multiple, intricate routes taken by its raw ingredients to merge and become a distinctive element of culinary tradition.It took almost two thousand years and input from the Far East, the Arabic world, and the Americas, for the dish to take centre stage. Its development is the result of chance encounters, unplanned exchanges, and unpredictable intersections. As we dig in search of spaghetti’s origins, we find its strands wrap right around the world.“Learned and entertaining.”–Il Giornale

FROM THE INTERNATIONALLY ACCLAIMED AUTHOR OF A GIRL RETURNED, COMES A MOVING NEW NOVEL ABOUT SISTERHOOD, THE PAST AND ITS INDELIBLE MARKS * NATALIE PORTMAN'S BOOK CLUB PICK FOR JULY 2022**A Strega Prize 2021 finalist *It’s the darkest time of night. Adriana, a baby in her arms, hammers on her sister's door. Who is she running from? What uncomfortable truth will she deliver? Like a whirlwind, Adriana breaks into her sister’s life bringing chaos and cataclysmic revelations. Years later, the narrator gets an unexpected, urgent summons back to Pescara. She embarks on a long journey through the night, and through the folds and twists of her memory, from her and her sister’s youth, their loves and losses, their secrets and regrets. Back in Borgo Sud, the town’s fishermen’s quarter, in that impenetrable yet welcoming microcosm, she will discover what really happened, and perhaps make peace with the past. Donatella Di Pietrantonio, expert chronicler of the bonds between mothers and daughters, revisits the places and characters of A Girl Returned with a novel focussed on the ambivalent, ambiguous, wavering but steadfast relationship between sisters.

***LONGLISTED: THE HWA GOLD CROWN 2021******A Sunday Times BOOK OF THE YEAR 2021: "An ambitious, epic debut."******A NEW YORK TIMES BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR 2021***A Times BOOK OF THE MONTH: "Beautifully written and profoundly insightful."“A memorable tapestry of politics, religion and conflicting human desires.” —The Sunday Times“Cathedral is a masterpiece, one of the best historical novels I’ve read in a long time. Spellbinding and so evocative of place and time. A triumph.”—Dan Jones "Fascinating, fun, and gripping to the very end."—Roddy DoyleA sweeping story about obsession, mysticism, art, and earthly desire.At the centre of this story, is the Cathedral. Its design and construction in the 12th and 13th centuries in the fictional town of Hagenburg unites a vast array of unforgettable characters whose fortunes are inseparable from the shifting political factions and economic interests vying for supremacy. From the bishop to his treasurer to local merchants and lowly stonecutters, everyone, even the town’s Jewish denizens, is implicated and affected by the slow rise of Hagenburg’s Cathedral, which in no way enforces morality or charity. Around this narrative core, Ben Hopkins has constructed his own monumental edifice, a choral novel that is rich with the vicissitudes of mercantilism, politics, religion, and human enterprise. Ambitious, immersive, a remarkable feat of imagination, Cathedral deftly combines historical fiction, the literary novel of ideas, and a tale of adventure and intrigue. Fans of authors like Umberto Eco, Elif Shafak, Hilary Mantel, Ken Follett and Jose Saramago will delight at the atmosphere, the beautiful prose, and the vivid characters of Ben Hopkins’s Cathedral.