A BEST BOOK OF 2023
The Washington Post・Kirkus Reviews

A NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS’ CHOICE

This extraordinary Strega Prize-winning novel confirms Domenico Starnone’s reputation as one of Italy’s greatest living writers. Told against the backdrop of Naples in the 1960s, a city that itself becomes a vivid character in this lush, atmospheric novel, The House on Via Gemito is a masterpiece of Italian fiction, one that is steeped in Neapolitan lore.

A modest apartment in Via Gemito smelling of paint and turpentine. Its furniture pushed up against the wall to create a make-shift studio. Drying canvases moved from bed to floor each night. Federí, the father, a railway clerk, is convinced that he possesses great artistic promise. If it weren’t for the family he must feed and the jealousy of his fellow Neapolitan artists, nothing would stop him from becoming a world-famous painter. Ambitious and frustrated, genuinely talented but also arrogant and resentful, Federí is scarred by constant disappointment. He is a larger-than-life character, a liar, a fabulist, and his fantasies shape the lives of those around him, especially his young son, Mimi, short for Domenico, who will spend a lifetime trying to get out from under his father’s shadow.

Starnone, a finalist for the National Book Award with Trick, author of New York Times notable book of the year, Ties, and the critically acclaimed Trust, takes readers beyond the slim, novella-length works for which he is known by American readers to create a vast fresco of family, fatherhood, and modern Naples.

This work has been translated with support from
the Italian Ministry of Culture’s Centro per il libro e la lettura.

Domenico Starnone
Domenico Starnone is an Italian writer, screenwriter and journalist. He was born in Naples and lives in Rome. He is the author of thirteen works of fiction, including First Execution (Europa, 2009), Via Gemito, winner of Italy's most prestigious literary prize, the Strega.

• Jul 12 2023
  “Readable and elegant.”
  — Times Literary Supplement
• Jul 12 2023
  “Exuberant.”
  — On the Seawall
• Jul 12 2023
  “Richly detailed.”
  — The Washington Post
• Jul 10 2023
  “A writer exquisitely attuned to class anxieties.”
  — The Atlantic
• May 30 2023
  “Vivid.”
  — The Brooklyn Rail
• May 30 2023
  “A masterpiece.”
  — The New York Times Book Review