The book
Winner of the 2015 Strega Prize, Italy's preeminent prize for fiction, Ferocity is a cinematic suspense novel that also addresses vital social questions, a combination of Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl and Jonathan Franzen's Freedom, filtered through the fierce Mediterranean vision of Elena Ferrante.
Southern Italy, the 1980s. On a hot summer's night under a full moon, far from the outlying neighborhoods of a southern Italian metropolis, Clara stumbles naked, dazed, and bloodied down a major highway. When she dies no-one is able to say exactly how or why, but her brother cannot free himself from her memory or from the questions surrounding her death. The more he learns about her life and death, the more he uncovers the moral decay at the core of his family's ascent to social prominence.
At once an intimate family saga, a history of an entire region, and a portrait of the moral and political corruption of a whole society, Ferocity is an exhilarating, ambitious, and vivid work of fiction by Italy's foremost literary novelist.
The author
Nicola Lagioia
One of Italy’s most critically acclaimed contemporary novelists, Nicola Lagioia has been the recipient of the Volponi, Straniero, and Viareggio awards, in addition to the Strega. In 2010 he was named one of Italy’s best writers under forty. He has been a jury member of the Venice Film Festival and is the program director of the Turin Book Fair. Lagioia is a contributor to Italy’s most prominent culture pages. He was born in Bari, and lives in Rome. Ferocity is his English-language debut.
Press
- Dec 22 2017
40 Excellent UK Books From 2017
— BookRiot - Nov 1 2017
New Mysteries
— USA Today - Oct 18 2017
Paving Paradise: The Beauty and Terror of Nicola Lagioia’s “Ferocity”
— Los Angeles Review of Books - Oct 15 2017
layers of darkness and corruption
— The Guardian - Oct 6 2017
The Best International Book Releases of October 2017
— The Culture Trip - Oct 6 2017
“famiglia territory”
— The Financial Times