Diamante, age twelve, and Vita, age nine, are sent by their poor families in southern Italy to make a life for themselves in America. Theirs is an unforgettable love story, a riveting tale of immigrant survival and hope that takes them from the crime-ridden tenements of Little Italy to the brutal rail yards of the Midwest, on paths that cross with the Black Hand, Caruso, and Chaplin. It is a story that reaches across decades, to the son of Vita, who would travel as far as Italy to find his roots and the man who could have been his father. In Vita, the author, Melania G. Mazzucco, also tells her own story of how she found Diamante and Vita in old photographs, documents, ship manifests, and the fading memories of her relatives, and from these fragments of the past imagined this gripping epic fiction of her family's history.

Vita

Mazzucco, Melania G.

Farrar. Straus & Giroux

Vita: A Novel

A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice
In April 1903, Diamante, age twelve, and Vita, age nine, are sent by their poor families in southern Italy to make a life for themselves in America. Theirs is an unforgettable love story, a riveting tale of immigrant survival and hope that takes them from the crime-ridden tenements of Little Italy to the brutal rail yards of the Midwest, on paths that cross with the Black Hand, Caruso, and Chaplin. It is a story that reaches across decades, to the son of Vita, who would travel as far as Italy to find his roots and the man who could have been his father.
In Vita, the author, Melania G. Mazzucco, also tells her own story of how she found Diamante and Vita in old photographs, documents, ship manifests, and the fading memories of her relatives, and from these fragments of the past imagined this gripping epic fiction of her family's history.

Literature & Fiction

United States

Picador

A moving but unsentimental examination of one woman's life as she navigates life after war
It's Christmas Eve and twenty-seven-year-old Manuela Paris is returning home to a seaside town outside Rome. Years ago, she left to become a soldier. Then, Manuela was fleeing an unhappy, rebellious adolescence; with anger, determination, and sacrifice she painstakingly built the life she dreamed of as a platoon commander in the Afghan desert. Now, she's fleeing something else entirely: the memory of a bloody attack that left her seriously injured. Her wounds have plunged her into in a very different and no less insidious war: against flashbacks, disillusionment, pain, and victimhood. Numb and adrift, she is startled to life by an encounter with a mysterious stranger, a man without a past who is, like her, suspended in his own private limbo of expectation and hope. Their relationship―confusing, invigorating―forces her to confront her past and the secrets she, and those closest to her, are hiding. In chapters that toggle between Manuela at home, grappling with her new life, and Manuela in Afghanistan, coming to terms with her role as a leader of fighting men and a peacemaker in a country that doesn't seem to want her help, Melania G. Mazzucco limns a story of love and loss, death and resistance in terms both surprising and cathartic. Limbo asks its readers, no less than its protagonist, what it means to be a daughter, a sister, a woman, a citizen, a soldier―or, more simply, a human.

Limbo: A Novel

Literary

Farrar. Straus and Giroux

In April 1903, the steamship Republic spills more than two thousand immigrants onto Ellis Island. Among them are Diamante, age twelve, and Vita, nine, sent by their poor families in southern Italy to make their way in America. Amid the chaos and splendor of New York, the misery and criminality of Little Italy, and the shady tenants of Vita's father's decrepit Prince Street boarding house, Diamante and Vita struggle to survive, to create a new life, and to become American. From journeys west in search of work to journeys back to Italy in search of their roots, to Vita's son's encounter with his mother's home town while serving as an army captain in World War II, Vita touches on every aspect of the heartbreaking and inspiring immigrant story. The award-winning Italian author Melania G. Mazzucco weaves her own family history into a great American novel of the immigrant experience. A sweeping tale of discovery, love, and loss, Vita is a passionate blend of biography and autobiography, of fantasy and fiction.

Thorndike Pr

It's Christmas Eve and twenty-seven-year-old Manuela Paris is returning home to a seaside town outside Rome. Years ago, she left to become a soldier-a platoon commander in the Afghan desert-fleeing an unhappy, rebellious adolescence. Now she's fleeing something else entirely: the memory of a bloody attack that left her seriously injured.Numb and adrift, she is startled to life by an encounter with a mysterious stranger, a man without a past who is, like her, suspended in his own private limbo of expectation and hope. Their relationship, at once confusing and invigorating, forces her to confront her past and the secrets she is hiding.In chapters that toggle between Manuela at home and in Afghanistan, Melania G. Mazzucco limns a story of love and loss, death and resistance. Limbo asks its readers, no less than its protagonist, what it means to be a daughter, a sister, a woman, a citizen, a soldier, a veteran-or, more simply, a human.

You used to have everything and now you have nothing. Who's madder than you? Old King Lear has decided to retire from his royal duties. He calls his three daughters to him, and asks each to tell him how much they love him. The eldest two, Goneril and Regan, flatter him with their words. Cordelia - the youngest and, until now, his favourite - only says that she loves him as a daughter must love her father. Furious, he disinherits her and divides his kingdom between her two sisters. But Goneril and Regan soon turn against Lear, forcing him to wander in the wilderness with only his court jester for company, desperately hoping for a reconciliation with Cordelia... Dave Eggers says, of the series: "I couldn't be prouder to be a part of it. Ever since Alessandro conceived this idea I thought it was brilliant. The editions that they've complied have been lushly illustrated and elegantly designed."

The Story of King Lear (Save the Story)

Children's Books

Biographies

Pushkin Children's Books

Jai Lu French

Ella, tan amada

Contemporary

Editorial Anagrama

La larga espera del ángel

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Mazzucco, Melania G.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Mazzucco, Melania G.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Mazzucco, Melania G.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Vita

Vita: A Novel

Limbo: A Novel

Vita: A Novel

Vita

Limbo: A Novel

The Story of King Lear (Save the Story)

Vita

Ella, tan amada

La larga espera del ángel