• Premio Strega 2019 · Shortlist

Strangers I Know

La straniera

Claudia Durastanti (born 1984)

Translated by Elizabeth Harris

English editions

In English

• Strangers I Know

  Riverhead Books · United States · 2022 · Hardcover · 304 pages

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Born in Brooklyn to two deaf parents whose passionate, stormy marriage defies their isolation, the narrator is taken as a child from New York to a small village in Basilicata, returning to America from time to time. Her childhood is feverish and fragile, yet like a stubborn plant she puts down roots everywhere. As an adult she keeps drawing new migration routes, between Rome and London, for study, for independence, for love. Neither just a memoir nor just a novel, the book maps a family's story as a story of bodies and words, in which measuring the distance from home becomes impossible.

AI-generated summary

About the book

Form

Novel

Length

285 pages in the original

Genres

Autofiction, Family (assigned by AI)

Set in

United States, Italy, United Kingdom

First published

2019 by La nave di Teseo

Author's age

35 when first published

ISBN

9788893447751 (original)

9780593087947 (Riverhead Books, United States)