Translated into English for the first time two decades after its publication in Italy, this award-winning masterwork from the great contemporary storyteller revolves around an artistically gifted, embittered Naples railway clerk who is convinced his familial responsibilities have robbed him of life as a famous painter.
Longlisted for the International Booker Prize 2024
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 20 years ago, The House on Via Gemito is a masterpiece of contemporary Italian literature.
Publisher: Europa Editions (UK) Ltd
ISBN: 9781787704534
Number of pages: 480
Dimensions: 210 x 135 mm
"Masterly... Twenty-three years is a long time to wait for a book this good, but here it is at last." - TLS
“A searching work of autofiction about a family in postwar Naples.” - The New York Times
“A complex family narrative and a masterpiece on the elusive nature of truth.” - The New York Times Review of Books
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