Kirjahaku

Winner of the 2019 John Fante First Novel Prize The critically acclaimed novel from the author of Everything Calls for Salvation, adapted into a Netflix Original series, is a powerful coming-of-age story about loss, identity, and rebirth Daniele is a young poet plagued by an unknown darkness, "an invisible disease of the heart, or of the mind." He refuses to conform to society's expectations--finding a job, starting a family--yet he struggles to define a path of his own and find a sense of purpose in life. In a desperate attempt to pull himself out of a dangerous spiral of emptiness and self-destruction, Daniele accepts a job at a pediatric hospital in Rome, the Bambino Ges , where he'll work with sick children, many of them terminally ill. In the "house of gazes," that is, the hospital, through his interactions with patients and co-workers, and forced to confront pain in some of its most heartbreaking forms, Daniele will slowly start to look at life with new eyes, and learn to accept it in all its brutality and beauty. Writing with the evocative power and sharp focus of a poet, Mencarelli tells a raw and moving story of self-discovery, renewal, and liberation achieved through solidarity and compassion, a story closely inspired by the events of his own life.

NETFLIX SERIES TO BE RELEASED OCTOBER 2022 WINNER OF THE 2020 YOUTH STREGA PRIZE “Mencarelli writes with the grace and power of a poet. His words illuminate truth like a flash of lightning.”—Il Sole 24 Ore “Moving and engaging. This novel will stay with you.”—Goffredo Fofi, Internazionale “Extraordinary for its intensity and empathy.”—Radio Tre? June 1994. Twenty-year-old Daniele wakes up in a hospital room surrounded by strangers. Slowly, memories of the previous night return to him: a spiral of anxiety and anger, an explosion of violence so intense that it almost inflicted irreparable damage to him and his family. To his horror, he learns that he’s been sentenced to a week of mandatory treatment in a psychiatric ward. Writing with lucid realism and stunning emotional force and drawing from the author's own personal experience of mental illness, Mencarelli chronicles seven days in the hospital as he struggles to find a way out of the darkness. Daniele finds unexpected companions in his fellow patients—men who, like him, have felt the full brunt of life’s pain. Together they will realise the hidden strength and value of their common fragility and the boundless empathy they feel towards others. By focusing on some of the most marginalized people in our society, Mencarelli has written a heart-breaking and unforgettable novel that challenges our notion of normality and celebrates the salvific power of solidarity and vulnerability.

Daniele is a young poet plagued by an unknown darkness, “an invisible disease of the heart, or of the mind.” He refuses to conform to society’s expectations—finding a job, starting a family—yet he struggles to define a path of his own and find a sense of purpose in life. In a desperate attempt to pull himself out of a dangerous spiral of emptiness and self-destruction, Daniele accepts a job at a paediatric hospital in Rome, the Bambino Gesù, where he’ll work with sick children, many of them terminally ill. In the “house of gazes,” that is, the hospital, through his interactions with patients and co-workers, and forced to confront pain in some of its most heartbreaking forms, Daniele will slowly start to look at life with new eyes and learn to accept it in all its brutality and beauty. Writing with the evocative power and sharp focus of a poet, Mencarelli tells a raw and moving story of self-discovery, renewal, and liberation achieved through solidarity and compassion, a story closely inspired by the events of his own life.

A searing story about homecoming, set in Rome Gabriele Bilancini hasn’t been home for four years. Home is the Tuscolano neighbourhood in Rome, where he was born and grew up with his parents, sister, and a tight-knit group of friends. Today, he lives in Milan and he’s a world-famous designer. The perfect example of “making it”. Back home, nothing has changed. His friends' lives above all: everything is the same, as if no time at all had passed. Ashamed of his origins, but unsatisfied with his present, however successful, Gabriele finds himself enveloped into the sweet, suffocating embrace of the past. An embrace that will force him to confront the deep fracture within himself. Mencarelli distills these elements with stunning clarity in a fast-paced novel. He offers us a passionate portrait of a Roman suburban neighbourhood that could be any suburb, real or imagined, where the protagonist nurtures a desire to express himself that is never satisfied, and a need to belong that can never be fulfilled.