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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, one that is steeped in Neapolitan lore.
A modest apartment in Via Gemito smelling of paint and turpentine. Its furniture pushed up against the wall to create a make-shift 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 Neapolitan artists, nothing would stop him from becoming a world-famous painter. Ambitious and frustrated, genuinely 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 young son, Mimi, short for Domenico, who will spend a lifetime trying to get out from under his father's shadow.
Starnone, a finalist for the National Book Award with Trick, author of New York Times notable book of the year, Ties, and the critically acclaimed Trust, takes readers beyond the slim, novella-length works for which he is known by American readers to create a vast fresco of family, fatherhood, and modern Naples.
"Every character...is a full-fledged human being filled with desire, regret, resentment, bitterness, and hope. At the same time, the Neapolitan setting comes equally alive...Starnone, it seems, can do no wrong. A complexly structured masterpiece." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Starnone draws on his personal history in this nuanced saga of life as the child of an artist, originally published more than 20 years ago and now appearing in English for the first time...Starnone's richly examined narrative makes for an enduring coming-of-age." —Publishers Weekly
"Domenico Starnone's most important book...robust, flawlessly structured and luminously written." —L'Indice (Italy)
"A cross-section of Neapolitan life, and a life-story expertly told." —Benevento (Italy)
This information about The House on Via Gemito was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Domenico Starnone was born in Naples and lives in Rome. He is the author of thirteen works of fiction, including First Execution (Europa, 2009), Ties (Europa, 2017), a New York Times Editors Pick and Notable Book of the Year, and a Sunday Times and Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year, Trick (Europa, 2018), a Finalist for the 2018 National Book Award and the 2019 PEN Translation Prize, and Trust (Europa, 2021). The House on Via Gemito won Italy's most prestigious literary prize, the Strega.
Oonagh Stransky has been a translator of Italian literature for over 20 years. Some of the writers whose work she has brought into English include Pier Paolo Pasolini, Carlo Lucarelli, Giuseppe Pontiggia, and Roberto Saviano. Stransky started studying Italian at Middlebury Language Schools in 1986, got her BA in Comparative Literature from Mills College and UC Berkeley in 1989, and her MA in Italian from Columbia University in 2002. She currently lives in Italy.
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