Literary Fiction

Il figlio delle sorelle

(The Sisters' Son)

Ponte alle Grazie, March 2022, pp.208

Full English translation available

English and French translation rights handle by the author

A novel about obsessions and the falling apart of the traditional family, caused by a framework of omissions. Through an editing process that follows the journey of memory – that of a mentally unstable man – this is a psychological thriller that lays bare the frailty of the characters and the thousand facets of a challenging family relationship.

In the past, in a Rome only lightly hinted at, there is a couple in crisis: unable to have children, they try in every way until a miracle happens and Sabrina is born. But the dream come true has a devastating effect on their lives.

In the present, we have Sabrina – now nearly grown up – who has just found again the father she hadn’t seen for over ten years. We have her mother, hurt and abandoned, who has raised her but been unable to rebuild her own life. We have Carlotta, the daughter of the father’s girlfriend, who soon becomes the sister Sabrina has always wanted.

They are women, sisters and daughters: symbolic figures and likenesses, experienced actresses and makers of humanity and sorrow. Their stories are told by Sabrina’s father who, after her birth, gradually slides into mental illness. But women are above all life, and the unexpected trip by father and daughter into the depths of the Sicily of their origins brings out the mythical roots of this story and the foundations of sisterhood.

Ponte alle Grazie, March 2022, pp.208

  • “In Luccone’s prose, Carver meets the ruthless autobiographical writing of Francesco Piccolo.”

    Luca Bottura, La Repubblica

  • “Refined and never predictable prose.” 

    Giacomo Giossi, Il Manifesto

  • “Word games, lexical metamorphoses, assonances: everything in Luccone’s prose goes towards building original forms of expression, always with an eye on early 20th-century European literature.”

    Michela Marzano, La Repubblica

Leonardo Luccone

Leonardo Luccone, an editor and talent scout, started the editing office and literary agency Oblique in 2005. He has translated and edited books by Anglo-American authors such as John Cheever and F. Scott Fitzgerald. He writes for La Repubblica and Rivista Studio. In 2009, Ponte alle Grazie published his first novel, La casa mangia le parole (The House Eats Words).

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