LONGLISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE 2024
-Starnone uses languages the way a great painter works with colour, conjuring the illusion of three dimensions from a blank flat surface.- -Jhumpa Lahiri
-One of Italy-s most accomplished novelists.- -The Guardian
-Masterly.- -Times Literary Supplement
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.
Feder-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.
