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“A portrait of Rome; of its economic divide, its social problems, its social outcasts. Lagioia paints a grim but compelling picture.”

— The Irish Times, Dec 8 2023

“The City of the Living will keep you up way past bedtime...a special book for a sophisticated reader.”

— Durango Telegraph, Dec 7 2023

“I don't think it's possible to praise this book enough.”

— CrimeReads, Sep 19 2023

“This documentary thriller is psychogeography at its most perceptive, an insightful socio-economic analysis of Italy — and an attempt to understand what human beings are capable of doing to each other and to themselves.”

— Financial Times, Sep 19 2023

“A piercingly observed family saga, a chilling mystery surrounding an enigmatic female lead and a shrewd depiction of modern Italy—this book exceeds at every level.”

— BookRiot, Dec 22 2017

“Nicola Lagioia’s rich, dense, difficult novel, a sensation in his home country and now capably translated by Antony Shugaar, is a family saga, with numerous strands crossing numerous time periods...with a rawness few books offer.”

— USA Today, Nov 1 2017

“...meandering, philosophical, and dizzyingly layered. I Am Love meets Toni Morrison, The Godfather meets Love Medicine.”

— Los Angeles Review of Books, Oct 18 2017

“FEROCITY is a portrait of a family tragedy, but also at its heart explores two competing visions of humanity: one ferocious and deterministic, the other transcendent and free-willed.”

— The Guardian, Oct 15 2017

“Ferocity is the prize-winning Italian novel whose fusion of Elena Ferrante and Twin Peaks looks hard at the contradictions of south Italy while unfolding a gruesome murder mystery.”

— The Culture Trip, Oct 6 2017

“Ferocity resists classification as a whodunnit, focusing instead on the corruption coursing through a society desperate to seem more moneyed than it is, a masquerading city of “offices, courthouses, journalists, and sports clubs”.”

— The Financial Times, Oct 6 2017

“Winner of Italy’s Strega Prize, Ferocity, translated from the Italian by Antony Shugaar, is a hypnotic novel, a feverish drama unfolding in 1980s Bari.”

— BBC Culture, Oct 3 2017

“Though Lagioia’s English-language debut, his fourth book and the winner of Italy’s Strega Prize, will draw comparisons to Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan quartet, it deserves its own classification as complex, darkly absorbing, and mysterious literary fiction.”

— Booklist, Oct 1 2017

“A rich and readable cautionary tale for strong-minded readers.”

— Library Journal (Starred Review), Sep 1 2017

“Part in-depth family drama, part up-close depiction of societal corruption, this novel leaves a mark.”

— The National, Aug 27 2017

“[Lagioia’s] kaleidoscopic approach allows the mystery to slowly and captivatingly resolve while offering a layered portrait of contemporary Italian life and the abuses of power that money can excuse.”

— Publishers Weekly, Aug 21 2017

“Nicola Lagioia’s FEROCITY is finally making its way to American shores, and it’s sure to be one hot topic of conversation when it finally comes out.”

— PopSugar, Aug 19 2017

“Pitched as Gillian Flynn meets Jonathan Franzen, Ferocity won the 2015 Strega Prize, Italy’s preeminent fiction prize, and concerns a dead woman, her brother who’s set on figuring out what happened to her, and Southern Italy in the 1980s. Sign me up.”

— The Millions, Jul 11 2017

“A wonderfully sophisticated and self-aware novel that takes dead aim at our decadent dreams.”

— Charles D’Ambrosio, author of THE POINT, Jul 10 2017

Read an excerpt of Ferocity in The White Review.

— The White Review, Jun 1 2017

“It is a stimulating piece of fiction which is at once a complex family saga and a profound state-of-the-nation novel.”

— BookRiot, May 24 2017