Impossible

(Paperback)

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***Longlisted for the CWA Crime in Translation Dagger 2023***

"If there's an entry point into the work of the enduring, award-winning Italian writer Erri De Luca, then N.S. Thompson's excellent translation is surely it ... Thoughtful and wise about life and landscape, it's the most cerebral of whodunnits" Ben East, Observer

Two men go walking in the Dolomites, but not together; one falls to his death, the other reports the body. Is it coincidence that they knew each other in earlier years, and that one had betrayed the other

Impossible is at once a game of cat-and-mouse in which the prisoner, a survivor of a left-wing cadre now long dispersed, holds his own. Nor is he crushed by his solitary confinement from which he communicates with his distant beloved. This novel is a brilliant hymn to the lure of the mountains, an engrossing illumination of political brotherhood, and also the subtlest of detective stories.

Reviews

'A subtle detective story beginning when a hiker suspiciously falls to his death in the Dolomites ... Thoughtful and wise about life and landscape, it's the most cerebral of whodunnits' -- Ben East, Observer
'The only true first-rate writer that the new millennium has given to Italy' -- Giorgio De Rienzo, Corriere della Serra
'A book with rare intensity that is classic Erri De Luca, political engagement, loyalty, fidelity ... a passion for nature and above all the mountains, rigour and brotherhood' -- Alexandra Schwartzbrod, Libration
'A unique and remarkable novel' -- Loup Besmond de Senneville, Croix

Author Bio

Erri De Luca is an award-winning writer, poet and activist whose literary awards include the Prix Andre Malraux, the European Book Prize and the European Prize for Literature. The author of more than seventy books translated into more than thirty languages, he has been called 'the writer of the decade' byCorriere della Sera. A dedicated mountain climber, he lives a reclusive life in the hills surrounding Rome.N.S. Thompson is a poet and critic and translator of Italian fiction and poetry. He has worked as a gardener and museum curator in Italy and as an academic and creative writing tutor in Oxford.