Addio fantasmi
More than 50.000 copies sold. Shortlisted for Premio Strega 2019. Premio Martoglio, Premio Subiaco Città del libro, Premio Alassio Centolibri and Mario La Cava 2019A home between two seas, a place of return: a woman’s existence has hit deadlock inside those walls. Her only way out now is to relive her own personal story. Nadia Terranova narrates the obsession with loss – that one-on-one with the past that makes us all survivors of our own battles.
Ida has just landed in her native Messina, called up by her mother before they start restructuring the family’s flat and put it up for sale. Surrounded by her childhood objects, Ida has to choose what to keep and what has to go; this awakens a nightmare from when she was just a little girl. Twenty-three years ago her father disappeared; he didn’t die – he just left one morning and never came back. His absence has triggered a deafening silence between Ida and her mother, as well as Ida’s feeling of anomaly; it has even impacted her relationship with her husband, both her boon and her bane. Mirroring herself in the absence of her father figure, Ida has become a woman dominated by fear and suspicion of desire in its every form. But now that her childhood home is besieging her with its ghosts, Ida has to find a way to break the spell and ward off her father once and for all.
Nadia Terranova (1978) was born in Messina. Einaudi Stile Libero has published her novels Gli anni al contrario (2015, winner of many prizes including Bagutta Opera Prima and The Bridge Book Award) and Addio fantasmi (2018, finalist Premio Strega). She has written several children’s books, including Bruno il bambino che imparò a volare (2012), Casca il mondo (2016) and Omero è stato qui (2019). She writes for La Repubblica and other papers.
