“Lying on her side with her dead daughter on her chest, she felt her daughter slowly cooling. Then she had no more tears.” It’s a white book, with a sincere and far from banal title; skimming the table of contents, you’ll find yourself thinking: snow, fog, and so on. You’re probably thinking of a simple book, imbued with the purity to which Korean literature, and specifically Han Kang’s, has become somewhat accustomed. We’re faced with...
“FRIDAY RE-VERSO” “There was something unpleasant in that wait, it was as if everything around him was about to explode.” The writer of this review has an (unhealthy?) passion for stories about the wickedness of children. One of the best novels on the subject (leaving aside Golding) is “Nothing” by Janne Teller: we recommend it. Let’s be clear, ours isn’t a morbid curiosity; rather, it’s about dissecting that part of the self that is then...
“As soon as I saw Alisia get off the train I thought with relief that we had reached the point: she was finally leaving me.“ Silvio and Alisia are a non-couple. They have almost nothing in common, yet their relationship continues like a stone thrown into a lake, which continues to sink until it reaches the bottom. As a couple, however, they work because, as the author writes, the most successful couples are those who...
“Dear diary, I didn’t wake up feeling extroverted this morning either.“ A quality graphic novel, accessible even to those of us who aren’t familiar with the genre. A captivating story, suitable for all ages—and that’s not just a figure of speech. The book is a caress for the children we were, and for all those we’ll encounter in our lives as parents or children of family friends. The themes of shyness, of the wrong things...
“The man had turned off the light and lay down again. He hadn’t fallen asleep again.“ We enter the story with a sense of suspicion, almost thriller-like, especially in the opening pages, where the first chapter ended with a resounding wow. This driving force drove the reader to read and unravel the narrative, rich in details, descriptions, objects, and lists, until reaching the midpoint of the book, precisely halfway through, where a new and resounding...
“Rye flowers, tablecloth of fears.“ A book of poetry is a great challenge. A reader always finds themselves undecided whether or not to tackle a text they’re unlikely to fully understand. This is because reading a collection of poems is reading oneself, through another person’s words. Given the countless requests we’ve received, we’ve decided to take on this challenge. So we’re talking about poems as fresh as the early morning air, as intense as a...
“And God promised a good year, or at least he made all the almond and peach trees in the valley cover themselves in flowers.” We found a beautiful, dated version of this novel in a bookstore, and we decided it was there just for us, those of us who always love reading a story with a touch of something far removed from contemporary life. From the first pages, we realized we were giving ourselves a...
What an experience it was to read this book in my twenties! To experience all over again the excitement and curiosity of first love, to feel the characters’ hearts pound with the unprecedented pain that comes when you lose, for the first time, the person you fell in love with. To find yourself, unfiltered, in the intricate dialectic of someone who is experiencing the same complex choices as you, discovering that you, too, live in...
Catalan writer and artist Irene Solà’s debut novel, The embankment, despite its age—the Catalan original dates back to 2017—arrives in Italy with a surprisingly intact and original charm. Nothing in this novel is linear: the story unfolds through small, intimate episodes, a mosaic of intertwined narratives and tales, in which writing itself becomes the thread that ties together characters, old loves, eccentric families, places, and memories. At the center of the novel is Ada, who...
“The carrion crow flaps wildly. Each blow is a poem of freedom denied, burned. Erased.” First nominee for the 2026 Edoardo Kihlgren Award for a Debut Book. Be thrilled for the year-long wait! The story begins in Lancashire, England. During her fieldwork, ornithologist Olga Leffman filmed a video of carrion crow, seemingly organized, lighting a fire on a rock face. Thanks to its spread via social media, the video quickly went viral worldwide, as did...
