Excerpt from I'm Not Scared by Niccolò Ammaniti, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Mama, exasperated, put the jug in my hands. 'You go, Michele, you're the eldest. Don't make such a fuss.' She said it as if it was a trivial matter, something quite unimportant.

A smile of triumph spread on my sister's lips. 'See?' 'It's not fair. I went yesterday. I'm not going.'

Mama said to me with that harsh tone that came into her voice a moment before she lost her temper: 'Do as you're told, Michele.'

'No.' I went over to papa to complain. 'Papa, it's not my turn. I went yesterday.'

He took his eyes off the television and looked at me as if it was the first time he had ever seen me, stroked his mouth and said: 'Do you know the soldier's draw?'

'No. What is it?'

'Do you know what the soldiers did during the war to decide who went on the dangerous missions?' He took a box of matches out of his pocket and showed it to me.

'No, I don't know.'

'You take three matches,' - he took them out of the box - 'one for you, one for me and one for Maria. You remove the head from one of them.' He took one and broke it, then he gripped them all in his fist and made the ends stick out. 'Whoever draws the headless match goes to get the water. Pick one, come on.'

I pulled out a whole one. I jumped for joy.

'Maria, it's your turn. Come on.'

My sister took a whole one too and clapped her hands.

'Looks like it's me.' Papa drew out the broken one.

Maria and I started laughing and shouting: 'You go! You go! You've lost! You've lost! Go and get the water!'

Papa got up, rather crestfallen. 'When I get back you must be washed. Do you hear me?'

'Would you like me to go? You're tired,' said mama.

'You can't. It's a dangerous mission. Besides, I've got to get my cigarettes from the truck.' And he went out of the house with the jug in his hand.

We got washed, ate pasta with tomato sauce and frittata, and after kissing papa and mama we went to bed without even begging to be allowed to watch television.

I woke up during the night. I had had a nightmare.

Jesus was telling Lazarus to rise and walk. But Lazarus didn't rise. Rise and walk, Jesus repeated. Lazarus just wouldn't come back to life. Jesus, who looked like Severino, the man who drove the water tanker, lost his temper. He was being made to look a fool. When Jesus tells you to rise and walk, you have to do it, especially if you're dead. But Lazarus just lay there, stiff as a board. So Jesus started shaking him like a doll and Lazarus finally rose up and bit him in the throat. Leave the dead alone, he said with blood-smeared lips.

I opened my eyes wide. I was covered in sweat.

Those nights it was so hot that if you were unfortunate enough to wake up it was hard to get back to sleep. The bedroom I shared with my sister was narrow and long. It had been converted from a corridor. The two beds were laid lengthwise, one after the other, under the window. On one side was the wall, on the other about thirty centimetres to move in. Otherwise the room was white and bare.

In winter it was cold and in summer you couldn't breathe.

The heat that was accumulated by the walls and ceiling in the daytime was emitted during the night. You felt as if your pillow and woollen mattress had come straight out of an oven.

Behind my feet I saw Maria's dark head. She was sleeping with her glasses on, face upwards, completely relaxed with her arms and legs apart.

She used to say that if she woke up without her glasses on she got scared. Usually mama took them off as soon as she fell asleep because they left marks on her face.

The insecticide coil on the window sill produced a dense toxic smoke that killed the mosquitoes and didn't do us much good either. But in those days nobody worried about that sort of thing.

Excerpted from I'm Not Scared by Niccolò Ammaniti. Copyright Niccolò Ammaniti 2002 all rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of the publisher, Canongate Publishing. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher.

Translated from the Italian by Jonathan Hunt.