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Just after World War II, a young orphan living in Naples comes under the protection of Don Gaetano, the superintendent of an apartment building. He is a generous man and is very attached to the boy, telling him about the war and the liberation of the city by the Neapolitans. He teaches him to play cards, shows him how to do odd jobs for the tenants, and even initiates him into the world of sex by sending him one evening to a widow who lives in the building. But Don Gaetano possesses another gift as well: he knows how to read people's thoughts and guesses correctly that his young friend is haunted by the image of a girl he noticed by chance behind a window during a soccer match. Years later, when the girl returns, the orphan will need Don Gaetano's help more than ever.
"A lyrical narrative about a thorny search for happiness." - Kirkus Reviews
"The only true first-rate writer that the new millennium has given us for now." - Corriere della Serra
"The story of a risky happiness, the happiness of a city in revolt, of a violent and rediscovered love." - Avvenire
"A hymn to life, to the Resistance, to education." - L'Alsace
This information about The Day Before Happiness was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Erri De Luca was born in Naples in 1950 and today lives in the countryside near Rome. He is the author of several novels, including God's Mountain and Three Horses . He taught himself Hebrew and translated several books of the Bible into Italian. He is the most widely read Italian author alive today as well as an international best seller.
Michael F. Moore is a New York-based translator and scholar whose previous translations include God's Mountain and Three Horses, both by Erri De Luca, and The Silence of the Body by Guido Ceronetti.
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