While Mimì the son faces lifelong frustration in attempting to solve the enigma of his father’s life and identity, crossing and recrossing the territory of the past like a baffled veteran searching for traces of war on a long-deserted battlefield, Starnone the novelist succeeds beautifully in exploiting Federì’s self-contradictions and the unreliability of memory to create what is both a complex family narrative and a masterpiece on the elusive nature of truth.
Read the full review in The New York Times Book Review.
