Winner of the 2015 Strega Prize for Young Authors

A young girl struggles with her beloved brother's accidental death, her mother's depression, and fitting in at school in Fabio Genovesi's touching, funny, and imaginative new novel.

Thirteen-year-old Luna lives in a small town on the coast of Tuscany. She is smart and funny. When her beloved brother Luca drowns in a surfing accident, Luna's mother retreats into herself. At school, stricken by her loss yet determined to carry on, Luna makes a new friend and ally, the eccentric Zot, a boy from Chernobyl. Luna believes that Luca still speaks to her through a whale bone washed up on the nearby shore.

Luna's fantasies clash with the lies–even the well-intentioned ones—of the adult world in this touching, vibrant novel by the author of Live Bait. Luna is an unforgettable character—vivid, stubborn, highly imaginative, determined to become her own person.

Fabio Genovesi
Fabio Genovesi was born in Forte dei Marmi in Versilia in 1974. He is the author of Live Bait (Other Press, 2014), which has been translated into over ten languages, an earlier novel, Versilia Rock City, the memoir Morte Dei Marmi (Laterza, 2012), and the Young Reader's Strega Prize winning-novel, The Breaking of a Wave.

• Feb 1 2017
  “An immense, good-natured, self-indulgent tale”
  — Kirkus Reviews