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Donatella Di Pietrantonio

A Girl Returned

Cover: A Girl Returned - Donatella Di Pietrantonio

Donatella Di Pietrantonio

A Girl Returned

2019, pp. 176, e-Book
ISBN: 9781609455293
Translated by: Ann Goldstein
Region: Italy
Paper edition Paper edition Paper edition
$ 10.99
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The book

WINNER OF THE CAMPIELLO PRIZE

LONGLISTED FOR THE 2020 TRANSLATED BOOK AWARDS

A 2019 BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR
(Kirkus ReviewsWashington PostDallas Morning News)

A pitch-perfect rendering in English by Ann Goldstein, Elena Ferrante’s translator.

“I was the Arminuta, the girl returned. I spoke another language, I no longer knew who I belonged to. The word ‘mama’ stuck in my throat like a toad. And, nowadays, I really have no idea what kind of place mother is. It is not mine in the way one might have good health, a safe place, certainty.”

Told with an immediacy and a rare expressive intensity that has earned it countless adoring readers and one of Italy’s most prestigious literary prizes, A Girl Returned is a powerful novel rendered with sensitivity and verve by Ann Goldstein, translator of the works of Elena Ferrante. Set against the stark, beautiful landscape of Abruzzo in central Italy, this is a compelling story about mothers and daughters, about responsibility, siblings, and caregiving.

Without warning or explanation, an unnamed 13-year-old girl is sent away from the family she has always thought of as hers to live with her birth family: a large, chaotic assortment of individuals whom she has never met and who seem anything but welcoming. Thus begins a new life, one of struggle, tension, and conflict, especially between the young girl and her mother. But in her relationship with Adriana and Vincenzo, two of her newly acquired siblings, she will find the strength to start again and to build a new and enduring sense of self.

The author

Donatella Di Pietrantonio
Donatella Di Pietrantonio is the winner, with The Brittle Age, of the 2024 Strega Prize for Fiction, Italy’s most prestigious literary award. Her short fiction has been published by Granta Italy. Her novel A Girl Returned (Europa, 2019) won the Campiello Prize, and A Sister’s Story (Europa, 2022) was a finalist for the 2021 Strega Prize and a New Yorker Best Book of 2022. She lives in Penne, Abruzzo.

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