La casa del carrubo

English sample available

Set in a Sicily devastated by war, this is a polyphonic novel that slowly unfolds and reveals the love, intrigues, courage and hope of a family from whom history has snatched everything.

 

Catania, 1943. When war comes knocking at your door, it never seems as bad as you expected. At least that’s what Vittorio Floridia thinks the day after a bombing destroys his house and any hope of returning to normality. In an attempt to save his family from the grip of fear and hunger, he agrees to move in with the pharmacist Luigi Villalba, his late best friend’s brother. And so in this large country house, standing in the shade of a large carob tree, we get to know the members of a family like so many others, and yet different from all of them. Luca, with black curls and an impudent manner, is getting ready to fight a war his father has long stopped approving of. Elena, sweet and compliant, already feels like a woman at sixteen, but is still a child in everyone else’s eyes. Little Michele, slight and silent, risks losing his life after being wounded in the bombing. Then there’s Agata, now Vittorio’s wife, but for ever the love of Luigi’s life and his great regret.