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.
Federì, 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.
‘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
LONGLISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE 2024
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