The House on Via Gemito: A Novel

Summary

LONGLISTED FOR THE 2024 INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE

A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR —the Washington Post & Kirkus Reviews

A NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS' CHOICE

This extraordinary Strega Prize-winning novel confirms Domenico Starnone's reputation as one of Italy's greatest living writers. Told against the backdrop of Naples in the 1960s, a city that itself becomes a vivid character in this lush, atmospheric novel, The House on Via Gemito is a masterpiece of Italian fiction.

A modest apartment in Via Gemito smelling of paint and turpentine. Its furniture pushed up against the wall to create a studio. Drying canvases moved from bed to floor each night. Federí, the father, a railway clerk, is convinced that he possesses great artistic promise. If it weren't for the family he must feed and the jealousy of his fellow artists, nothing would stop him from becoming a famous painter. Ambitious and frustrated, talented but also arrogant and resentful, Federí is scarred by constant disappointment. He is a larger-than-life character, a liar, a fabulist, and his fantasies shape the lives of those around him, especially his son, Mimi, who will spend a lifetime trying to get out from under his father's shadow.