The House on Via Gemito: Longlisted for the International Booker Prize 2024

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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.

Federi, 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.

Narrated against the background of a Naples still marked by WWII and first published in Italy over 20 years ago, The House on Via Gemito is a masterpiece of contemporary Italian literature.

Reviews

'"Starnone uses languages the way a great painter works with colour, conjuring the illusion of three dimensions from a blank flat surface."' - Jhumpa Lahiri

'

"Masterly... Twenty-three years is a long time to wait for a book this good, but here it is at last."



' - TLS

'Starnone packs a huge amount into a small compass.' - The Sunday Times

'"[Starnone] portrays unflinchingly the violence, physical and verbal, that can erupt within the closest relationships."' - Financial Times

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"A searching work of autofiction about a family in postwar Naples."

' - The New York Times

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Author Bio

Domenico Starnonewas born in Naples and lives in Rome. He is the author of thirteen works of fiction, includingFirst Execution(Europa, 2009),Ties(Europa, 2017) aSunday TimesBest Book of the Year,Trick(Europa, 2018), a Finalist for the 2018 National Book Award and the 2019 PEN Translation Prize, Trust (Europa, 2021), andThe House on Via Gemito(Europa, 2023), winner of Italys most prestigious literary prize, the Strega. It was longlisted for the International Booker Prize 2024. 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.