The House on Via Gemito: Winner of the Strega Prize

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Description

The modest apartment in Via Gemito smells of paint and white spirit.The living room furniture is pushed up against the wall to create a make-shift studio, and drying canvases must be moved off the beds each night.

Federi, the father, a railway clerk, is convinced of possessing great artistic talent. If he didn't have a family to feed, he'd be a world-famous painter. Ambitious and frustrated, genuinely talented but full of arrogance and resentment, his life is marked by bitter disappointment.His long-suffering wife and their four sons bear the brunt.

It's his first-born who, years later, will sift the lies from the truth to 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 steeped in the city's language and imagery, The House on Via Gemito - first published 20 years ago - is a masterpiece of contemporary Italian literature.

Reviews

'"Domenico Starnone's most important book . . . robust, flawlessly structured and luminously written."' - L'Indice

'"A cross-section of Neapolitan life, and a life-story expertly told."' - Benevento

'"A masterpiece."' - Reading in Translation

Author Bio

Domenico Starnone was born in Naples and lives in Rome. He is the author of thirteen works of fiction, including First Execution, Ties, a New York Times Editors Pick and Notable Book of the Year, and a Sunday Times and Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year, Trick (Europa, 2018), a Finalist for the 2018 National Book Award and the 2019 PEN Translation Prize, and Trust. The House on Via Gemito won Italys most prestigious literary prize, the Strega. Oonagh Stransky has been a translator of Italian literature for over 20 years. Some of the writers whose work she has brought into English include Pier Paolo Pasolini, Carlo Lucarelli, Giuseppe Pontiggia, and Roberto Saviano. Stransky started studying Italian at Middlebury Language Schools in 1986, got her BA in Comparative Literature from Mills College and UC Berkeley in 1989, and her MA in Italian from Columbia University in 2002. She currently lives in Italy.