General Fiction

L'equilibrio delle lucciole

(The Balance of Fireflies)

Adriano Salani Editore, June 2022, pp.464

A woman in search of herself in the small mountain village where she grew up. She returns to an archaic world, its traditions and its dark stories.

A novel that tastes of bygone times, an archaic language that strikes a deep chord and gives voice to a world that no longer exists.

After a love affair goes wrong, Adelaide decides to return to the village where she was born: a cluster of stone houses in the rugged, snow-capped mountains. Home, or meizoun in the language of this land on the French border. She leaves – runs away – to seek shelter in a place where time stands still, in small things, in the smell of the forests, of burning wood and the breath of animals. The only person waiting for her there is Nanà, a brisk ninety-year-old, and a closet full of boxes, dozens of small and large containers stored according to an unfathomable order, in which the old woman has crammed the recollections of many lives amid men, flowers, trees, water and time. Photographs, letters and objects that tell stories of wars, of sweethearts expected for forty years… a polyphonic testament. For Adelaide, diving into the memory of her people means finding an echo to her own story, redescovering the various forms of love, and uncovering a part of herself she had kept hidden even from herself. And it is also a good way to change her skin and recover – once and for all – from pain.

Adriano Salani Editore, June 2022, pp.464

  • “It’s the novel Pasolini should have written last. (…) a powerful novel, at once humble and princely, that seems to come from another world and another time.”

    Antonio D’Orrico, Corriere della sera

  • “A gem of a novel that’s an ode to life and – despite everything – to love.”

    Paola Maraone, Elle Decor

  • “This novel is a breath of truly pure, crisp air in the landscape of Italian literature. A poetical, almost tactile prose that gives off scents and feelings, that is rare and rarefied, that must be savoured.”

    “a story with a very powerful emotional impact”

    Dario Lessa, LeiStyle

  • “a poetical elegy of everyday life”

    Daniela Monti , 7, Corriere della Sera

  • “Valeria Tron’s debut novel is poetical and gives you a sense of affection and genuine things. It carries the wisdom of old people and their stories, as well as a longing for a home”

    Donna Moderna

  • “Tron creates very dense prose that reads and sounds like poetry, partly thanks to her use of dialect”

    Manuela Sasso , Diva e Donna

  • “Tron is above all someone you stop to listen to because she thinks outside the box […] proved by the success of her first novel”

    Laura Pezzino, F

  • “An intensely lyrical novel (…) grounded in vigorous storytelling verve (…) And so it fulfills one of literature’s “moral” duties: to draw anonymous, invisible lives out of oblivion.”

    Filippo La Porta, La Repubblica

Valeria Tron

Valeria Tron was born in Val Germanasca, one of Piedmont’s Occitan valleys, where she also lives for most of the year. She is a singer-songwriter, an illustrator and a woodworker. Salani published her debut novel L’equilibrio delle lucciole (The Balance of Fireflies, 2022), which has enjoyed great success with readers, booksellers and the press.

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