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Book cover of The House on Via Gemito

The House on Via Gemito

Winner of the Strega Prize

Domenico Starnone

22

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. 

Federí, 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. 

Translated by Oonagh Stransky
Publisher: Europa Editions (UK) Ltd
Binding: Paperback
Publication date: 15 Jun 2023
Dimensions: 208 x 136 x 39 mm
ISBN: 9781787704534