Author(s): Marta Barone

Fiction

A young woman retraces the footsteps of her elusive father through one of the darkest periods of Italian history.

'What an extraordinary voice! I was captivated from the first page and I know Marta's unique voice will stay with me for a long time. Bravissima!" - Tomasz Jedrowski, author of Swimming in the Dark

Newly-bereaved, bookish and lonely in Turin, a young woman sets out to chronicle her father's secret lives - and her struggle to accept his loss. She is startled to discover that the gentle, mercurial doctor was sentenced to jail in 1986 for membership of an armed band. Her father, L.B., lived through the Years of Lead, a time of unrest when extreme factions of left and right took hostages, set bombs and murdered their countrymen. Unable to move on before she can understand her family's past, she goes in search of him - and ultimately of herself too - the only way she knows how, by reading everything she can ... Through her search for the truth, a very different picture starts to emerge.