Why this challenge? This year I’ve decided to host a reading challenge because I think that they are a brilliant idea. They help to make reading a more collective experience and are a great way to find out more about any particular author / genre / topic and get to know about books you might never have come across. I chose this topic because - as an Italian who has been living abroad for many years now - I feel the need to learn more about my home country and I’m curious to see the difference between the way it is portrayed by native Italians and others. The details of the challenge The challenge will run from January, 1st 2011 to December, 31st 2011 . The aim of the challenge is to read at least 12 books that are set in Italy. Whether written by Italian authors or not, it doesn’t matter. They don’t have to be set exclusively in Italy but this country needs to play a significant role in the book. The challenge can include non-fiction books about Italy. You can also review Italian lea...
Welcome to the blog tour for The Best Postboy in England by Stephen Frost! More about the book… Summer, 1916. Fourteen-year-old Freddie Lovegrove begins his new job as Postboy in the quiet rural English village of Eagley. But the shadow of war looms large over this peaceful idyll as Freddie is tasked with delivering news from the battlefields of France. The villagers call him the angel of death. Freddie is befriended by Suhani Harkness, an Indian woman living in an isolated Manor House where she tends to wounded soldiers from the trenches. Persuading Freddie to become the amanuensis to a soldier who cannot write, he finds new purpose in his work. But the grim reality of his job weighs down ever more heavily, until the telegram he has most feared arrives from the front – news of the death of one of Suhani’s sons. Set against the backdrop of one of the deadliest conflicts in history, this novel is a poignant and powerful exploration of the human cost of war for those...
By Margaret Mazzantini At present, Margaret Mazzantini’s latest book, Nessuno si salva da solo , is not available in English but I am confident that the translation will follow soon. Nessuno si salva da solo is the story of a great love that has run its course. Delia and Gaetano have recently separated and they meet for dinner to make arrangements for the summer holidays of their two children, Nico and Cosmo. While facing each other across the table of the restaurant, they can’t help but wonder when their passion has turned into resentment and they reminisce about good times, yes, but mostly disappointments and expectations not met. The book opens with Delia and Gaetano sitting at the restaurant and closes with them having just parted ways. A few hours in which we get to dig deep inside them and uncover those raw feelings that the end of a relationship never fails to bring to the surface. Mazzantini’s writing style is as raw as those feelings. Words are sharp, unkind. We glimpse some ...
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