L’inverno di Gioia

Giona has no memories of what came before. Barely fourteen years old, he lives in a harsh, desolate mountain village with his grandfather Alvise, who imposes a steady stream of absurd tasks and mortifying punishments on his grandson. Owning nothing of his own besides a shabby red sweater, Giona performs the tasl meticolously until he manages to escape. But his escape turns out to be  an inexorable fall into the underworld, laced with distorted memories of his family that seem to belong to a previous life, where truth isn’t necessary what it appears to be.

A horrowing journey through the battlefields of the human mind with a totally unexpected ending.  Tapparelli is a master in creating palpable tension carrying the reader into a nightmare world of madness and paranoia.