Extraordinary and dazzling.— Times Literary Supplement
What really happened to Vittorio’s mother that day in the stable? That she’d been bitten by a snake was clear enough: the swelling in the ankle proved it. But that other swelling, the one that led eventually to his mother’s long, loose dresses, to those dark, cold stares from the other villagers – what strange thing could be taking shape there in his mother’s belly, and what doom would it carry them all to?
Winner of the Governor General’s Award for Fiction
Winner of the Books in Canada First Novel Award
Winner of the F.G. Bressani Prize
Winner of England’s Betty Trask Award
Winner of the Royal Society of Literature’s Winifred Holtby Prize
A New York Times Best Book
A Los Angeles Times nominee for the Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction
Winner of France’s Prix Contrepoint for Young Authors
A Selection of the Month of France’s national bookstore assocation L’oiel de la Lettre
A Selection of the Month of France’s Libraries Association
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Praise for Lives of the Saints
“This is a marvellously told story, unbearably poignant…I can hardly think of a book I have enjoyed more this year.”— Justin Cartwright, The Telegraph
“An impressive debut…more will be heard from this author.”— The Guardian
“There is an inner strength in Nino Ricci’s prose which is apparent on every page…This is an outstanding first novel, acutely and sensitively observed.”— The Tablet
“Nino Ricci…has written a first novel with hardly a false note.”— The Observer
“Lives of the Saints is simple, moving and compelling.”— The Spectator
“A beautifully paced and measured first novel…an extraordinary story – brooding and ironic, suffused with yearning, tender and lucid and gritty…perfect pitch and brilliant descriptive powers.”— The New York Times Book Review
“Nino Ricci’s complex and skilfully fashioned tale of life in an Italian Apennine village offers pleasure too seldom present in contemporary fiction: full and involving characterizations, an exhilarating combination of tightly knit plot and episodic looseness, and a rich sense of lives lived truly communally, in conflict and in balance with one another…exudes a dazzling breadth and richness.”— USA Today
“A book to celebrate – a wise, poignant and poised novel.”— Wall Street Journal
“A fine, artful piece of work…a powerful tale.”— Washington Post
“Lives of the Saints is a gem of a novel, and its author is blessed with the rare ability to recreate the world entire and make us believe in it.”— The Globe and Mail
“This seems to me to be literature at its best, a sense of life lived, a sense of life felt, not without dreams, not without poetry, but without fakery.”— The Toronto Star
Photo by Ellie Csepregi
