“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...
“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...
“FRIDAY RE-VERSO” “What ever gave me the patience to persist until I learned to read the words of a book?” We wonder how this book isn’t required reading in every school. It deserves a place on children’s bookshelves between To Kill a Mockingbird and Fahrenheit 451; if you haven’t already, read it now, before they all burn them. Categorising Mime as science fiction seems risky, to say the least: reading this book today means...
Many don’t know it, but Luigi Pirandello’s L’esclusa (The Excluded) represents the Agrigento-born author’s first true novel. My advice is to approach this book without thinking about the existentialism of Adriano Meis or the identity crisis of Vitangelo Moscarda, and to expect nothing. Because the truth is that this title stands out from all of Pirandello’s fiction for one very simple reason: its protagonist. A completely unconventional female protagonist, stronger than any other figure portrayed...
“VENERDÌ RE-VERSO” “[…] the infinite depth of the dream behind the stars.” Without getting too esoteric, it must be said that sometimes the coincidences that connect us to books have a certain oracular quality, like when the random player plays the exact song you were thinking about. And we’ve been thinking a lot about dreams lately. Will we classify it as suggestion, or will we choose to believe in that bit of magic that...
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...
“Love, my dear, is a feeling of luxury.” The story is about a love that shouldn’t have happened, just as it shouldn’t have died. On one side, we have Yves Harteloup, a wealthy man who has lost much of his wealth and is forced to live like a common clerk in early 1900s Paris, and Denise Jessaint, the young wife of a wealthy businessman, Yves’s comrade in arms during the Great War. The two meet...
“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...
Halfway between a sweet classic tale of The Little Match Girl and a heartbreaking glimpse into contemporary life, Stargate is a book capable of striking all the right chords. How to describe it? How to talk about the power of Christmas magic? How to recount the delicate relationship between sisters? How to explain what it means to be forced to care for someone? How to talk about a burden so heavy that it weighs down...
“On a scale of one to ten, how much did your parents love you?” Jack and Elizabeth are the two human beings we’ll be dealing with for exactly 720 pages; two protagonists we’ll have to explore and discover, and at a certain point we’ll have to side with, or worse yet: confront. Wait, don’t let the page count intimidate you, because more than a mountain to climb, the text is a sea to navigate. It’s...
