Nadia Terranova

This was a recommendation from the book 'Diary of a Tuscan Bookshop' and I was not disappointed for a moment.
The author writes in the first person and you almost get the feeling that everything described happened to her personally.
Ida receives a phone call from her mother asking her to come home because she wants to sell the flat and Ida should sort out the things she wants to keep. Ida fled to Rome years earlier to escape her nightmares and now lives with her husband in a flat in Rome.
Going home to Messina in Sicily is not easy for Ida because she has to come to terms with her past. This also means letting go of her father figure, who suddenly disappeared one morning when Ida was thirteen years old. His body was never found, so even twenty years later Ida still can't believe that he could be dead. She still sees him in front of her and he not only appears in her sleep but also in various places in Messina.
The book is very impressive and lovingly written. It shows how people can repress, but also how they cannot let go.
I can warmly recommend this book.… (plus d'informations)

"A child, Jewish. His big head makes him awkward, his character is shy. Curious and attentive to everything that surrounds him, he is fascinated by his father's extravagances, by his astonishing metamorphoses. He will soon lose it but he will revive in his drawings and in his writings his extraordinary paternal ability to identify with every object, every animal, every person. Until one autumn day in 1942, when a Nazi officer killed him on the street, in the Drohobycz ghetto. Through the moving writing of Nadia Terranova and the evocative images of Ofra Amit, a book that leads us into the fantasy world of one of the greatest Polish writers, Bruno Schulz, author of "The Cinnamon Shops". Naples Award 2012; Laura Orvieto Award 2013."… (plus d'informations)