Trick

From the author of the International Booker longlisted and winner of the Strega Prize The House on Via Gemito

"Starnone uses languages the way a great painter works with colour, conjuring the illusion of three dimensions from a blank flat surface." – Jhumpa Lahiri

"Compelling... One of Italy's most accomplished novelists." – The Guardian

Trick is a chillingly weird chamber piece - a very tricksy treat." – The Times

Trick is a stylish drama about ambition, family, and old age that goes beyond the ordinary and predictable. Imagine a duel between two men. One, Daniele Mallarico, is a successful illustrator who, in the twilight of his years, feels that his reputation and artistic prowess are fading. The other, Mario, is Daniele's four-year-old grandson.

Daniele has been living in a cold northern city for years, in virtual solitude, focusing obsessively on his work, when his daughter asks if he would come to Naples for a few days and babysit Mario while she and her husband attend a conference. Shut inside his childhood home—an apartment in the centre of Naples that is filled with the ghosts of Mallarico's past—grandfather and grandson match wits as Daniele heads toward a reckoning with his own ambitions and life choices.

Outside the apartment, pulses Naples, a wily, violent, and passionate city whose influence can never be shaken.