A geologist turns sleuth in this "engrossing and beautifully written suspense novel" set in Greece by the author of the Booker Prize shortlisted Europa ( The New York Times).A New York Times Notable BookIn the hallucinatory light and heat of a Mediterranean island, London geologist Peter Nicholson arrives to inspect a granite quarry where a worker has died under suspicious circumstances. Hired to write as damning a report ...

'A masterpiece.' -- The New Yorker 'A glowing light of modern Italian literature.' -- New York Times 'The places, events, and people in this book are real. I haven't invented a thing.' Natalia Ginzburg wrote her masterful autobiographical novel Family Lexicon while living in London in the 1960s. Homesick for her Italian family, she summoned them in this celebration of the routines and rituals, in-jokes and insults and, above all, the repeated sayings that make up every family. Giuseppe Lev...

Set in postwar Switzerland, Fleur Jaeggy's eerily beautiful novel begins simply and innocently enough: "At fourteen I was a boarder in a school in the Appenzell". But there is nothing truly simple or innocent here. With the off-handed knowingness of a remorseless young Eve, the narrator describes life as a captive of the school and her designs to win the affections of the seemingly perfect new girl, Frederique. As she broods over her schemes as well as on the nature of control and madness,...

A New York Times Notable Book of the Year: A deliciously entertaining account of expatriate life in a small village just outside Verona, Italy.Tim Parks is anything but a gentleman in Verona. So after ten years of living with his Italian wife, Rita, in a typical provincial Italian neighborhood, the novelist found that he had inadvertently collected a gallery full of splendid characters. In this wittily observed account, Parks introduces readers to his home town, wi...

The prize-winning author of Europa and Tongue of Flame "explores the nature of goodness and moral faith in this poignant, witty, and disturbing novel" ( Library Journal).George Crawley knows a thing or two about being good. After watching his missionary father die in Africa and his selfless mother get taken advantage of back in England, he knows that being good is for chumps. Looking out for himself, George has established a great career a...

A "marvelous" Mediterranean memoir of an expatriate father raising his children in Italy—from the author of Italian Neighbors ( The Washington Post).Tim Parks offers another lively firsthand account of Italian society and culture—this time focusing on all the little things that turn an ordinary newborn infant into a true Italian.When British-born Tim Parks heard a mother at the beach in Pescara shout to her son, "Alberto, don't sweat! No y...

Thomas needs to speak to his mother before she dies.But he's set to give a talk to a conference of physiotherapists in the Netherlands; if he leaves now will he get to her deathbed in time?Will he be able to say what he couldn't say before? He can't concentrate on what is happening now: his mind won't sit still. Should he try to solve his friend's marital crisis? Should he reconsider his separation from his own wife? And why does he need to pee

‘All Italy is here’ Sunday TimesFrom the bestselling author of Italian Neighbours, An Italian Education and A Season with VeronaLonglisted for the Dolman Travel Book AwardIn 1981 Tim Parks moved from England to Italy and spent the next thirty years alongside hundreds of thousands of Italians on his adopted country’s vast, various and ever-changing networks of trains.Through memorable encounters with ...

Daniel Burrow once began a beautiful walk from Konstanz to Como with Julia, mercurial professor of literature, mother to two of his pupils, married, and the love of his life.After years of their secret affair, they stepped out together on top of the world, full of delight in one another and in the future they imagined. Or was it only Dan who imagined it, really? He never had the chance to find out, because a few days into their adventure a single phone call changed everything....

A daring novel, once widely censored, about the scrappy, harrowing, and inventive lives of Rome's unhoused youth by one of Italy's greatest film directors.Boys Alive, published in 1955, was Pier Paolo Pasolini's first work of fiction and it remains his best known. Written in the aftermath of Pasolini's move from the provinces to Rome, the novel captures the. hunger and anger, waywardness and squalor of the big city. The life of the novel is the life of the...

An immersive and mesmerizing narrative that reimagines the Mesopotamian myth of the Great FloodA long time ago, the gods grew tired of humans and decided to send a flood to destroy them. But Ea, the god of fresh underground water, didn't agree. He advised one of his devotees, Utnapishtim, to build a quadrangular boat to house humans and animals, and saved these living creatures from the Flood.Rather than punish Utnapishtim for his disobedience, Enlil, King ...

A book that begins before Adam and ends after us. In this magisterial work by the Italian intellectual superstar Roberto Calasso, figures of the Bible and its whole outline emerge in a new light: one that is often astonishing and disquieting, as indeed—more than any other—is the book from which they originateRoberto Calasso's The Book of All Books is a narration that moves through the Bible as if through a forest, where every branch—every verse—may offer so...