On a hot, dusty square in a small town in Apulia, there are two monuments: one honors those who died in the First World War, and the other honors those who died in the Second. On the first monument, every name is “Palmisano,” and on the second, every name is “Converтини.” Forty-four people from two families—and all are dead. How could fate be so cruel to the men of these families?
A stunning, heartbreaking story about the life of a tiny village on a hilltop in Italy during the two world wars. An epic drama on Shakespearean scale unfolding in the south of Italy will delight readers who enjoy such different books as “The Godfather” and “Captain Corelli’s Mandolin.”
And yet Rafel Nadal isn’t Italian—he’s Catalan, even though all his books are devoted to Italy. Here is yet another new “geotag” on the literary map of modern fiction—new language, and a new name.