South

“[An] archly observed novel…playful, kaleidoscopic…wonderfully eccentric minor characters—chauffeurs, nursemaids, household servants—vie for center stage with the equally eccentric bourgeois clans that employ them…it’s ‘like a page out of Proust but without any aristocrats.’” —New York Times Book Review

“[An] exuberant, dizzying family saga…[a] wild ride through twentieth-century Italy, both political and personal.” —Booklist

“A sweeping story of family, community, and country, South is a saga in the truest sense of the word. In lush, enthralling, often funny prose, Fortunato beautifully captures both the great dramas and small poignancies that make up a life.” —Francesca Giacco, author of Six Days in Rome

“Gorgeous, sensual, seductive, and magnetic…a journey through time, history, space, passions.” —Giornale di Brescia

“[Fortunato’s] most beautiful book…a family saga with all the nuances of love and pain.” —Convenzionali

Praise for Mario Fortunato:

“As I read Fortunato’s writing, I have the impression of being faced with that kind of writer, rare in Italian literature, who, despite starting from a poetic state of mind, nevertheless manages to be a storyteller.” —Alberto Moravia

“Mario Fortunato is a natural storyteller.” —Doris Lessing

Mario Fortunato was born in Cirò, Calabria, Italy. For three decades he worked as a literary critic for the Italian current affairs magazine L’Espresso. More recently he has worked as a columnist for the German daily paper Süddeutsche Zeitung. He has also served as director of the Italian Cultural Institute in London. In addition to writing novels such as South (Other Press, 2023), a New York Times Best Historical Fiction Book of the Year, he has translated into Italian works by Evelyn Waugh, Virginia Woolf, and Henry James.

Julia MacGibbon has translated works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, including Marta Barone’s Sunken City. She lives near Rome.

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