IL GREMBO PATERNO

Il grembo paterno is a Bildungsroman that strikes in the heart, a story of love in which love given and received does not always coincide. It is the classic and profound story of an ancestral world in which the sudden arrival of money and success will shake existing relationships based on silences and primordial tenderness.

Where do we learn to love? How do we get sick inside and how do we recover? The Italian author who in the past years has been investigating our deepest emotions and relationships more than anyone else publishes the novel she has always seemed to be destined to write, and which is bound to mark the life of those who will read it. On a fatal night that will mark everyone's destiny forever, as in a dream, Adele returns in the small provincial town where she was born, hugged to her daughter Frida. She is marked by a nickname, Senzaniente (without anything) which has been burdening her family even after Rocco, her father, challenged their poverty and gained wealth. The relationship between Adele and Nicola, Frida's pediatrician - the man she fell in love with and with whom the harmony has started wavering - thus intertwines with the one between Adele and her father; the back and forth between past and present grows quicker and quicker, as what we have been deprived of as children is likely t become the sole measure of what we will be asking the world. The unforgettable characters of this book are unable to hang on to what they are convinced they wish; in the meantime, the intrinsic violence of the relationships merges with their intrinsic tenderness. And a television that is always on makes a fool of everyone's effort to believe in their own existence. In order to write her most inspired nove, Chiara Gamberale goes deep down to the source of our questions about love, to that steep land where we have started bein the person we are now. Born in 1977, Chiara Gamberale lives in Rome. She debuted in 1999 with Una vita sottile, followed, among others, by Le luci nelle case degli altri (Mondadori 2010) and the bestsellers Per dieci minuti (Feltrinelli 2013), Avrò cura di te (with Massimo Gramellini, Longanesi 2014), Adesso (Feltrinelli, 2016) La zona cieca (Feltrinelli, 2017), L'isola dell'abbandono (Feltrinelli, 2019) and Come il mare in un bicchiere (Feltrinelli, 2020). Her books have been translated in sixteen countries. She writes for 'La Stampa', 'Vanity FAir', 'Donna Moderna' and 'Grazia'.