The book
A BEST BOOK OF 2022 (New Yorker)
FINALIST FOR THE 2021 STREGA PRIZE
From the internationally acclaimed author of A Girl Returned, a spellbinding story about family, memory, love, and the relationships that define us.
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 is she carrying with her? Like a whirlwind, Adriana upends her sister’s life bringing chaos and cataclysmic revelations.
Years later, the narrator gets an unexpected, urgent summons back to Pescara, her hometown. 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, 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 attempt to 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 moving novel focused on the ambivalent, ambiguous, wavering but steadfast relationship between sisters.
The author
Donatella Di Pietrantonio
Donatella Di Pietrantonio is the winner, with The Brittle Age, of the 2024 Strega Prize for Fiction, Italy’s most prestigious literary award. Her short fiction has been published by Granta Italy. Her novel A Girl Returned (Europa, 2019) won the Campiello Prize, and A Sister’s Story (Europa, 2022) was a finalist for the 2021 Strega Prize and a New Yorker Best Book of 2022. She lives in Penne, Abruzzo.
Press
- Jun 29 2022
“This slim novel proceeds like a thriller.”
— Cleveland Review of Books - Jun 6 2022
“...moves fluidly between the past and the present.”
— The New Yorker - Apr 11 2022
“An immersion experience.”
— Booklist - Feb 17 2022
“...another simmering, intense novel of dysfunctional relationships.”
— Shelf Awareness