Presenter of
the National Book Awards
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Presenter of
the National Book Awards
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Domenico Starnone is an Italian writer, screenwriter and journalist. He was born in Naples and lives in Rome. More about this author >
Jhumpa Lahiri is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Interpreter of Maladies. Her books include The Namesake, Unaccustomed Earth, National Book Award Finalist The Lowland, and, most recently, In Other Words, an exploration of language and identity. More about this author >
Filed in the following archives
Translated by Jhumpa Lahiri
Imagine a duel. A face-off between a man and a boy.
The same blood runs through their veins. One, Daniele Mallarico, is a successful illustrator at the peak of his career. The other, Mario, is his four-year-old grandson who has barely learned to talk but has a few tricks up his loose-fitting sleeves all the same. The older combatant has lived for years in almost complete solitude. The younger one has been dumped with a grandfather he barely knows for 72 hours.
Starnone’s sharp novella unfolds within the four walls (and a balcony!) of the apartment where the grandfather grew up, now the home of his daughter and her family, where the rage of an aging man meets optimism incarnate in the shape of a four-year-old child.
Lurking, ever present in the conflict, is the memory of Naples, a wily, violent, and passionate city where the old man spent his youth and whose influence is not easily shaken.
Domenico Starnone and Jhumpa Lahiri read at the 2018 NBAwards Finalists Reading
