Shortlisted for the 2018 National Book Awards

Sharp, succinct storytelling and breathtaking prose combine in this new novel by the author of the New York Times editor’s pick, Ties.

Imagine a duel between an elderly man and a mere boy. The same blood runs through their veins. One, Daniele Mallarico, is a successful illustrator whose reputation is slowly fading. The other, Mario, is his four-year-old grandson. The older combatant has lived for years in solitude, focusing obsessively on his work. The younger one has been left by his querulous parents with his grandfather for a 72-hour stay. Shut inside an apartment in Naples that is filled with the ghosts of Mallarico’s own childhood, grandfather and grandson match wits, while outside lurks Naples, a wily, violent, and passionate city whose influence is not easily shaken.

Trick is a gripping, wry, brilliantly devised drama, “an extremely playful literary composition,” as Jhumpa Lahiri describes it in her introduction, about aging, family, art, and reconciling with one’s past.

Illustrations by Dario Maglionico

Domenico Starnone
Domenico Starnone is considered by many to be Italy’s greatest living author. He was born in 1943 in Naples and currently lives in Rome. He is the author of fifteen best-selling works of fiction, including: Ties, a New York Times Editors Pick and Notable Book of the Year, and a Sunday Times and Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year; Trick, a Finalist for the 2018 National Book Award and the 2019 PEN Translation Prize; and, Trust, “a short, sharp novel that cuts like a scalpel to the core of its characters” (LA Times). All three of these novels were translated by Pulitzer Prize-winner, Jhumpa Lahiri. In 2023, Europa released the Strega Prize-winning The House on Via Gemito in a translation by Oonagh Stransky. It was named a Washington Post and Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year and New York Times Editors Choice. In 2024, again in Oonagh Stransky’s translation, Europa released The Mortal and Immortal Life of the Girl from Milan, which the New Yorker described as “wonderfully off-kilter.” Starnone is the recipient many of Italy’s major literary prizes, including: the Strega prize, the Napoli prize, and the Campiello prize.

• Nov 12 2018
  “Starnone...sends us on a trip filled with trickery”
  — Vox
• Apr 19 2018
  “One of Italy’s most accomplished novelists spins a wonderful story...”
  — The Guardian
• Apr 1 2018
  “A superb, sometimes unsettling intergenerational portrait hitting on basic truths.”
  — Library Journal (Starred Review)
• Mar 30 2018
  " . . . an emotionally complex, layered story whose brevity serves to amplify profound themes . . . "
  — Shelf Awareness (Starred Review)
• Mar 13 2018
  Jhumpa Lahiri translates another Italian gem into English: Domenico Starnone’s ‘Trick’
  — The Washington Post
• Mar 11 2018
  Domenico Starnone Sketches a Ghost Story in 'Trick'
  — The Michigan Daily