CHRISTMAS GIFT IDEAS
On the hottest day of one of the hottest summers anyone can remember, journalist Federico Desideri is sent on an assignment: to interview Italy’s latest Oscar-winning film director. But in Rome. A world away from the reassuring familiarity of his native Milan.
When the director turns out to be elusive, and the Romans as rough as their reputation, Federico falls in with Barry Volpicelli, a seductive, fast-talking, America-obsessed rogue and supposed inspiration for the winning movie’s lead character. Instead of nailing the interview, he finds himself in Paradiso— a crumbling seaside estate with an eccentric cast of inhabitants who seem frozen in time.
Combining the style and charm of Paolo Sorrentino’s The Great Beauty with the wit of Alan Bennett, this social comedy for the social media generation is a blisteringly funny exploration of reality, illusion and the enduring myth of the Eternal City.
“The book everyone is talking about. By our sharpest writer, who is as cynical as he is tender” LUCA GUADAGNINO, Director of CALL ME BY YOUR NAME
“No Italian writer for a couple of generations has found such a pitch-perfect balance between cattiness and literary elegance and depth.” VINCENZO LATRONICO, Author of PERFECTION
“A darkly comic journey through the Roman night, among eccentric characters and disenchanted glamour” CORRIERE DELLA SERA
One night in Madrid , two hapless chancers, and a greyhound called Cromwell.
One night in Madrid. The one the tourists, and plenty of Madrileños never see. The Madrid of poker games, scams and dodgy deals. Of flyovers, bus stations and industrial estates. Of gamblers, gangsters, and the odd saint, who might just perform a miracle. The Madrid of Sánchez and Nikki.
In her latest book, Esther García Llovet follows this not quite Bonnie & Clyde pair of chancers on the brink as they desperately hunt down a greyhound called Cromwell, who might just be the answer to all their problems. With her razor-sharp language, her inimitable eye for the absurd, and her surreal style, that feels like David Lynch after too much vermut, García Llovet reveals herself as a cinematic storyteller par excellence and an unrivalled, passionate portraitist of the Spanish capital and the characters who live in its shadows.
Stylish, philosophical literary noir against a burning Athenian background.
Washed-up writer and wanderer of Athens’ nightlife, Michalis Krokos is happier watching the Johnny Depp trial than getting down to his next book. But a visit from a mysterious prosecutor with news that his friend Rebecca, s sharp-tongued trans sex worker is in trouble with a violent far-right group shakes him out of his apathy. Krokos agrees to go undercover as a fake news copywriter inside the group’s inner circle: write a few lines, steal a few secrets. But what begins as a rescue mission soon spirals into sinister blackmail plots and political paranoia.
Darkly comic literary noir and portrait of post-crisis Greece, Deepfake explores truth, loyalty and the absurd theatre of modern politics, against the background of a sweltering, sleepless, high-summer Athens.
Deepfake was shortlisted for the 2025 European Union Prize for Literature.
DEEPFAKE – because the conspiracy theories and the plot are as hot and frantic as midsummer in Athens
SÁNCHEZ – because it takes you to parts of Madrid that other books don’t reach
PARADISO – because Fellini meets The White Lotus in chaotic, seductive, eternal Rome.
On the hottest day of one of the hottest summers anyone can remember, journalist Federico Desideri is sent on an assignment: to interview Italy’s latest Oscar-winning film director. But in Rome. A world away from the reassuring familiarity of his native Milan.
When the director turns out to be elusive, and the Romans as rough as their reputation, Federico falls in with Barry Volpicelli, a seductive, fast-talking, America-obsessed rogue and supposed inspiration for the winning movie’s lead character. Instead of nailing the interview, he finds himself in Paradiso— a crumbling seaside estate with an eccentric cast of inhabitants who seem frozen in time.
Combining the style and charm of Paolo Sorrentino’s The Great Beauty with the wit of Alan Bennett, this social comedy for the social media generation is a blisteringly funny exploration of reality, illusion and the enduring myth of the Eternal City.
“The book everyone is talking about. By our sharpest writer, who is as cynical as he is tender” LUCA GUADAGNINO, Director of CALL ME BY YOUR NAME
“No Italian writer for a couple of generations has found such a pitch-perfect balance between cattiness and literary elegance and depth.” VINCENZO LATRONICO, Author of PERFECTION
“A darkly comic journey through the Roman night, among eccentric characters and disenchanted glamour” CORRIERE DELLA SERA
A crooked cop on a punk, picaresque chase through Benidorm's underbelly on the trail of Reggie Kray's cigarette lighter.
Meet Michela - English gangster father, flamenco dancer mother - a hard, uncompromising police officer, operating on the shadier side of the law. In the company of this unorthodox, magnetically compelling character, cult writer Esther García Llovet takes us on a breath-taking, high-speed, anarchic romp through the underbelly of the pearl of the Costa Brava, Benidorm, on the hunt for Reggie Kray’s stolen cigarette lighter.
Beyond the sunburn and all-day fry-ups, in casinos, bars that are fronts for money laundering and flashy high society parties, we meet an unforgettable cast of characters: English gangsters, Russian mafiosi, chancers, no-hopers, and low-life of all complexions in this unconventional yet literary thriller. With a turn of phrase that always astonishes, an eye for detail that is as forensic as it is cinematic, a sense of humour as dry as a glass of fino, and a wilful desire to break conventional genres, Llovet’s book feels like the best of Almodóvar in surreal, novel form.
Love, lust, adulthood and an ancient Fiat in one long hot Maltese summer
School’s out for summer, and for our unnamed narrator, that means three months away from his physics high school students to tinker with his ancient Fiat 131 and fret about his all-consuming obsession: Sarah, a tempestuous artist he met online. They sleep together, they text obsessively, but as July’s barbecues and boat trips segue into August’s festi, their intimate moments always reset into platonic disappointment, and she increasingly ghosts him in favour of an ever-changing group of new besties.
A sensation on its home island, this book gives poignant voice to a regular guy in his early thirties, trying to get a grip on love, life and growing up, and it paints a high-octane portrait of what it means to live in the hedonistic, overcrowded, workaholic, claustrophobic, contradictory mind-blast that is Malta.
You Know The Sun Bothers Me was shortlisted for the 2023 National Book Prize and the author won Malta’s National Book Prize for Best emerging Author in 2024. It is the winner of a PEN Translates award.
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“A powerfully idiomatic, warts-and-all vision of contemporary Malta, especially that which millennials experience.” ALEX VELLA GERA, THE MALTESE READER
“The only novel an author has to writ before they can retire for the rest of their lives. It captures the spirit of the times.” MARK VELLA
“Falzon’s novel captures the millennial and Gen Z experience against the backdrop of a scorching Maltese summer. Vintage cars, excessive drinking and moral ambiguity frame the story.” THE TIMES OF MALTA
“From the very first page, it puts you in the passenger seat and drives you at breakneck speed through every street, bypass and flyover on the island as it is today.” LORANNE VELLA
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AUTHOR
RYAN FALZON was born in Malta in 1988. He is an artist, author and art educator. His work is often abrasive and playful and he is known for constructing narratives by arranging texts and images in a collage-like fashion. Since 2011, Falzon has published several short pieces and his novel, Sajf (You Know The Sun Bothers Me) has been described as the voice of the Maltese millennial generation.
TRANSLATOR
JOE GATT is a writer, translator and editor. After stints in London and Berlin, he now lives in Brussels. In London he was the editor of GSpot magazine and did editorial work for Vogue and The Modern Review. His writing has appeared in Scintillas: New Maltese Writing 1 (Praspar Press), The London Magazine and Antoloġija 1 (Aphroconfuso) as well as publications including The Face, Dazed & Confused and The Guardian. He is co-editor of the Maltese literary journal Aphroconfuso.
YOU KNOW THE SUN BOTHERS ME – because in the depths of January, who doesn’t want to spend some time in the long, hot Maltese summer?
SPANISH BEAUTY – because time spent with Benidorm’s most hard-ass cop and her search for Reggie Kray’s lighter can brighten up any day.
KILLING THE NERVE – because Anna’s wanderlust, experiences and brilliant writing are truly illuminating
Faysal receives a mysterious letter about the death of aunt he can’t remember. Leaving his lover and his life in Europe behind, he returns to the village of his birth in Palestine and to his family’s extraordinary, deserted house, the palace on the higher hill. With a backdrop of violence and the permanent threat from settlers, Faysal wanders the once-lavish rooms as characters from the past return to shed light on his family story and on the story of his people.
In beautiful, angry prose, Karim Kattan introduces us to an intimate Palestine of the imagination where dreams and nightmares are in constant conflict. With hints of One Hundred Years of Solitude and Brideshead Revisited, he gives a nuanced deeply moving vision of the tragedy of war and a picture of his homeland that feels entirely new to English-speaking readers.
The book won the 2021 Prix des Cinq Continents de la Francophonie.
Samahani means “forgive me” in Swahili, but in the Arab controlled Zanzibar of slavery, cruelty and vengeance, does forgiveness ever stand a chance? Prize-winning Sudanese author Abdelaziz Baraka Sakin follows the epic story of a spoilt Omani princess and her eunuch slave and lover, Sondus. She longs to be free from her despotic father, the sultan, and her philandering husband. He wants to escape his enslavement and return to the African mainland to retrieve his mutilated manhood.With punching irony and cinematic drive, this provocative saga of the Indian Ocean slave trade explores race, class, freedom, history, and sexuality, and brings English-speaking readers a new take on these urgent contemporary issues with dark, ironic humour.
When it was built in the 1950s, nothing symbolised Cyprus entering the modern world like the Ledra Palace Hotel. In Constantia Soteriou’s jewel of a novella, the ambitions and shortcomings of the island’s turbulent twentieth century are played out among its occupants. Among them we meet the king in exile who needs to drown his sorrows with a drink disguised to look like tea; the porter who, among the English roses of the hotel's gardens, secretly plants a rose from his village to make his rosebud infusions with; the UN officer who drinks lemonade to deal with the heat and the lies; and the cleaning lady who always carries her holy water with her. They are reluctant actors in history, evocatively captured in this moving, personal, and highly original portrait of civil strife and division.
“Constantia Souteriou’s Brandy Sour tells guest’s stories in a slim, experimental novel whose flavours bounce off the page and straight into the mouth” THE SUNDAY TIMES
“This is, quite simply, one of the most powerful books ever to come out of our island...
In the powerful vignettes of Brandy Sour, we remember the dreams and struggles of our past. We rediscover our resilience, our perseverance. We see the lives of our parents and grandparents, aunts and uncles, sisters and brothers. And, ultimately, we find our own selves reflected on every page.
Brandy Sour is the story of the people of Cyprus. The real people. The real story." CYPRUS MAIL
Brandy Sour won the 2023 National Book Prize in Cyprus and Constantia Soteriou won the 2019 Commonwealth Short Story Prize
BRANDY SOUR – because it’s a beautiful, poignant introduction to Cyprus’s difficult twentieth century
SAMAHANI – because it’s an unprecedented meditation on the Indian Ocean slave trade through the eyes of a Zanzibari princess and her enslaved lover
THE PALACE ON THE HIGHER HILL – because a ghostly mansion in the West Bank holds the family secrets that mirror the story of the Palestinian people
A powerful examination of grief, family lies and the postcolonial condition in one woman’s attempt to repatriate her father’s body to France.
Annabella Morelli is twenty-three years old, dreams of becoming a poet and lives in Lyon, far from Congo-Brazzaville where she was born. The daughter of a Franco-Italian worker, and a Congolese girl who became a mother too young, Annabella remembers a happy childhood until one Christmas, at the age of seven, her father's anger exploded, and her mother left the family home.
When she learns of his death in Cameroon, her world collapses for the second time and in her desperate attempt to repatriate her father’s body to France, Annabella is forced to confront the family secrets, lies and deep trauma at the heart of her existence. This stunning debut explores grief, family relationships, personal truths and the post-colonial condition with beautiful, urgent writing. It was the winner of the 2024 Prix Goncourt du Premier Roman and the 2024 Prix Transfuge du Meilleur Premier Roman.
Rome 1965. A man and a woman, excluded from Italian society, abandon their eight month old daughter in the Villa Borghese and take extreme action. In 2021, that child, author Maria Grazia Calandrone, sets out to discover the truth of what took place, examining the places that her mother lived, suffered, worked and loved.
Your Little Matter is an intimate reconstruction of the life of a parent, a shocking insight into the real lives of marginalised women from the Italian South in the relatively recent past, and the revelation of a cause celebre that was a catalyst for the legalisation of divorce in Italy. Combining poetic insight with cool, journalistic investigation, the completely personal with the very public, the book tells a devastating story of how the institutionalised callousness of state and society can lead to tragedy.
"The extraordinary book ... spent weeks on the Italian bestseller lists and was shortlisted for the country’s top literary prize, the Strega. Just as Elena Ferrante’s Naples Quartet revealed the harsh reality of life for young women in Italy’s poorer regions, Calandrone’s memoir gives an unsparing view of the brutal treatment of women in desperate times that resonated powerfully with readers." Clare Longrigg, THE GUARDIAN
“Your Little Matter is an iridescent book about an Italian daughter reconstructing her mother. Calandrone's prose is tender and unflinching, poetic yet at times biting in its clarity. I adored this book. It felt to me like the call of a lost sister.” Molly Aitken, Author of BRIGHT I BURN
Your Little Matter was shortlisted for the 2023 Premio Strega.
YOUR LITTLE MATTER – because this reconstruction of an absent mother’s life uncovers dark personal and national stories about women in Italy
REPATRIATION – because one woman’s fight to bring her father’s body back from Africa opens unresolved childhood wounds
In a housing development in the middle of the nowhere, one of the many that were built in Spain, but never finished because of the crash, lives a small community of neighbours, trying to lead a normal life, despite living far from everything. Beyond the development that promised every luxury, beyond the streets leading nowhere, behind a high metal fence, the unfinished houses menace the inhabitants as they become occupied by people on the fringes of society whom the crash has destroyed.
Rosa Ribas’s unnamed protagonists come from different sides of this fence. The atmospheric, disturbing, and addictive story of their growing relationship is half quirky love story half strong commentary on how easily and quickly people can fall through the cracks of society through no fault of their own. Although the message is entirely universal, the context is deliciously and uniquely Spanish.
"A dark, satirical and very Spanish love story with echoes of Claudia Piñeiro and JG Ballard… A half-built housing estate becomes a microcosm of Spanish society during la crisis, a place where the people who bought into the bubble are forced to look on helplessly as their aspirational dreams are curdled by a new economic reality… Before long, the miniature society begins to fracture and the well-off residents turn on the squatters who have started living in their crumbling utopia. As the battle lines are drawn, an unlikely affair begins between a man on the run and a lonely woman who finds nightly solace in “Campari and little pills” Sam Jones, THE GUARDIAN
“For many readers, Rosa is the best noir writer in Spanish.’ Pedro Espinosa, DIARIO DE CADIZ
‘With its wonderful cast of characters that become more compelling on every page, this is sheer delight for even the most exacting reader’ Marta Marne, Book of the Week, EL PERIODICO
In tired, hot Paris at the end of August, a group of friends, who’d rather still be at the sea, meet for a dinner in one couple’s apartment.
Taking us behind the shutters of the Sixth Arrondissement, with a cast of characters that both delight and repel, fractured relationships, manipulation, bad behaviour and desperation are all laid bare in this very contemporary take on a Parisian huis clos story.
What starts as just a little dinner ends up having monumental consequences for everyone.
Longlisted for the 2026 International Booker Prize
In the tradition of a 19th-century epic — in a compelling twenty-first-century light
Outside Vallorgana, a tiny, isolated village high in the foothills of the Dolomites, the ‘Duke’ lives in the villa of his aristocratic ancestors. The last in the centuries’ old line of the Cimamontes, he spends his days on his land and absorbed in the family archive, tolerated, if gently ridiculed by the villagers who are his neighbours. When he finds out that the village big man is taking timber from his land, he has a decision to make. Will he stay in his glorious, cerebral isolation, or will he honour his ancestral blood and take action against this affront?
Matteo Melchiorre’s portrait of the idiosyncratic character of the Duke and the world of Valorgana is a sweeping feat of literary imagination. With the pace, panorama and plot twists of a great nineteenth-century classic, the breathless story of the Duke’s ensuing feud unfolds, asking some big twenty-first century questions about our relationships with privilege, the past, the natural world and each other.
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“The Duke is the story of a feud between two men set in an Italian village in the Dolomites. The build-up of tension as the quarrel gradually escalates is electric, as each move they make turns the heat up one more notch. Anyone who’s been in a dispute will recognise the reluctance to step away from the fight. The characters that the author paints are wonderfully evocative, including many of the minor figures who form part of the village. The village itself is one of the strongest ‘characters’ and we loved the feeling of claustrophobia of the place as the narrative unfolds. Packed full of plot twists, this is storytelling at its best.” INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE JUDGES
“This strange language takes hold of you - like a forest growing around you - and you don’t even notice.” PAOLO COGNETTI
“It’s a story set in the present, yes—but a present heavy with the weight of centuries. It has been a long time since I’ve read such a powerful novel, a novel that seeks to re-enchant the world.” TIZIANO SCARPA
“With The Duke, Matteo Melchiorre has crafted a taut, epic tale about the madness of power, the laws of nature and individual freedom.” IL LIBRAIO
“This remarkable book makes us believe that some of the reasons why we still plough our way through novels might still be alive: the thirst for adventure, the chill of the mountains, a sense of greatness slightly beyond our reach.” La Lettura, CORRIERE DELLA SERA
AUTHOR
MATTEO MELCHIORRE was born in 1981, Matteo Melchiorre began his professional career in academia as a researcher at the University of Udine and then the University Ca' Foscari, and the Iuav of Venice. He has been the director of the Museum Library and the Historical Archive of Castelfranco Veneto since 2018. He specializes in the economic and social history of the Middle Ages and the early modern period, as well as the history of mountains and forests. His first novel, Il Duca was published by Eianudi in 2022.
TRANSLATOR
ANTONELLA LETTIERI is London-based translator working into English and Italian and collaborates regularly with Foundry Editions. She was the 2023 National Centre for Writing Emerging Translator Mentee for Italian and worked with Howard Curtis. She translated Maria Grazia Calandrone’s Your Little Matter, her translations have appeared in Asymptote and she was awarded the first prize in the 2023 John Dryden Translation Competition.
THE DUKE – because when you enter the world of the Duke and his remote community in the Dolomites, you’ll never want to leave
JUST A LITTLE DINNER – because short can be sweet and who doesn’t love a complicated Parisian dinner party
FAR – because you’ll be gripped by the characters marooned in this post-crash, half-finished residential development on the burning plains of central Spain.
The secrets and silences of women’s lives in a Roman seaside town
In Scauri, an end of the line seaside town forty miles or so from Rome, Vittoria dies unexpectedly in her bath. Whilst the townsfolk meet the event with sad but respectful southern Italian silence, Lea, the town lawyer, wants to investigate. Who was Vittoria, what were her secrets, why had she mysteriously arrived in Scauri thirty years earlier? And was her relationship with Lea all that it seemed?
In this unforgettable portrait of a small town and the women who live there, reverberations from the past catch up with present. Through the silences, Vittoria’s story is revealed and everything - passions, emotions, and relationships - changes forever.
Novelist, editor, critic, cultural commentator and mathematician Chiara Valerio is a sensation in Italy and The Little I Knew is a huge bestseller. It was shortlisted for the 2024 Premio Strega.
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“With intelligence, irony and tenderness, Valerio radially questions the nature of desire and its energy” Paolo di Paolo, LA REPUBBLICA
“Whodunnit, an investigation into small town life, class, secrets and lies make this a classic. Valerio has written a hugely original literary novel that is accessible at the same time.” Letizia Pezzali, DOMANI
“The Little I Knew makes you want to live. It makes you want to go back to your home town, if only for a few days, and live.” Concita De Gregorio, DOMENICA LA REPUBBLICA
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AUTHOR
CHIARA VALERIO was born in Scauri in 1978 and lives in Rome. She has published essays, novels, short stories, including: La gioia piccola d’esser quasi salvi (2009), Spiaggia libera tutti (2010), Il cuore non si vede (2019), La matematica è politica (2020), Nessuna scuola mi consola (2021), Così per sempre (2022), La tecnologia è religione (2023)
TRANSLATOR
AILSA WOOD is a translator from Italian and French. Her work on Stefano Benni’s monologues from Le Beatrice was the winner of the prestigious John Dryden Translation Prize in 2022. Besides her work as a literary translator, she works across various related sectors including wine and tourism. Ailsa has an M.A. in Literary Translation (with Distinction) from the University of East Anglia and lives in Italy
Longlisted for the 2026 National Book Award for Translated Fiction (USA)
Two young Palestinian men find love in a mythical Jerusalem, oppressed by occupation and a biblical sandstorm
As a sandstorm of biblical proportions covers the land, two men cross paths in the labyrinthine old city of Jerusalem, where for centuries lovers have seduced each other by night with tales of jinns, warriors and wild beasts. Gabriel and Isaac fall in love, lose each other and find each other again. Then, despite the sand-filled wind and the yoke of occupation, they decide to go on holiday, on a road trip through the West Bank, a dangerous act of daring in a divided land.
After THE PALACE ON THE HIGHER HILL, Karim Kattan returns to the Palestine of his imagination, mixing orality with classical culture, the marvellous with the tragically real. Lyrical, languorous and shattering Eden at Dawn is a cry for love in the midst of war that confirms the strength of the author’s literary universe.
Widely acclaimed in France, Eden at Dawn has won several literary awards and was shortlisted for the Prix Renaudot in 2024. This translation has also been longlisted for the US National Book Award for Translated Literature 2026.
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“Karim Kattan’s book is an unforgettable queer love story, sensuous and otherworldly. Politically astute and mythical in scope, Kattan’s language transforms the language of desire into something luminous and enduring.” SALEEM HADDAD, author of Floodlines and Guapa
“A rare gem of a story – bittersweet, luminous, and intimate enough to feel like someone is whispering secrets in your ear.” ANGELO TIJSSENS, author of The Edges
“Karim Kattan is carving out a distinct path in the literary world with novels whose magnetic style carries the reader far away into a universe that is sensual, political and of breathtaking beauty.” LIBÉRATION
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AUTHOR
KARIM KATTAN is a Palestinian writer and poet. He was born in 1989 in Jerusalem and holds a doctorate in comparative literature. His 2017 shortstory collection, Préliminaires pour un verger futur, was a finalist for the Prix Boccace. The Palace on the Higher Hill, his first novel, won the 2021 Prix des Cinq Continents de la Francophonie, and was published by Foundry Editions in 2025.
TRANSLATOR
JEFFREY ZUCKERMAN is a translator of French literature. His work centers on contemporary fiction from mainland France and Mauritius—including Ananda Devi, Shenaz Patel, and Carl de Souza—as well as texts of the queer canon, including Jean Genet and Hervé GuibertIn addition to the many awards and honours he has received for his work, he was named a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government