Federico Falco

Translated by Jennifer Croft

“In the city the notion of the hours of the day, of the passage of time, is lost. In the countryside that is impossible,” the narrator tells us. He goes on to recount his day-to-day life in the house with garden where he has isolated himself in an attempt to cut off contact with everything and everyone and, possibly, to flee from himself. Time is almost palpable here, it goes by without haste and allows you to feel even the tiniest details around you: insects, noises, a falling leaf, the smell of damp earth. This story begins in January, and is told in chapters that span several months. The protagonist forges minimal ties with people from the rural environment in which he has exiled himself. He recalls his childhood and the many stories that peppered it: that Italian veteran of some war who hanged himself by mistaking the lights of the town for cannon flashes; the stories his grandmother told, perhaps real, perhaps taken from a movie. He remembers his arrival in the city as a student, muses over the structure we give to the stories we tell, the effort to unravel the secret of how they work; and evokes his relationship with Ciro and their break-up which prompted his move away from the city. This subtle, elusive and beautiful novel addresses the grief caused by a break-up, the loneliness that activates all the senses, the secret wisdom of the illuminating verses of poets, the need to tell stories. Falco at his best.