Description

The winner of the Strega Prize, Italy’s top literary award, and the basis of an internationally acclaimed motion picture, Quiet Chaos is now available in America. Author Sandro Veronesi, whose work has been glowingly compared to the novels of Ian McEwan and Martin Amis, dazzles with this powerfully compelling, often darkly funny story of a television producer whose world is misshapen by ironic tragedy. 

On the shores of the Mediterranean, exhausted from an afternoon of surfing, Pietro Paladini is shaken out of his stupor by a distant noise. “Over there!” he cries to his brother, Carlo, sunning beside him. “Over there!”

So begins the adventure that will tear a hole in Pietro’s life. For while he and his brother struggle to save two drowning swimmers, a tragedy is unfolding down the road at his summer cottage. Instead of coming home to a hero’s welcome, Pietro is greeted by the flashing lights of an ambulance, the wide-eyed stare of his young daughter, Claudia, and the terrible news that his fiancée, Lara, is dead.

Life must go on. Or does it? Pietro, a true iconoclast, has to find his own way .When he drops Claudia off for the first day of school, he decides to wait outside for her all day, and then every day. To protect her. To protect himself. To wait for the heavy fist of grief to strike. But as the days and weeks go by, the small parking lot in front of the school becomes his refuge from the world as well as the place where family and colleagues come to relieve their own suffering—among them, the woman he rescued from the waves. And Pietro plunges deeper into the depths of his life before seeing the simple truth before his eyes.

An unforgettable contemporary fable about stepping out of life after it cruelly turns everything upside-down, and finding a resolution to the unsolvable problem of loss in the beauty and strangeness of the everyday, Quiet Chaos is another literary wonder from Sandro Veronesi author of The Force of the Past.

About the Author

Sandro Veronesi is one of Italy’s most acclaimed writers of literary fiction, as well as a poet, essayist, journalist, and playwright. He is the author of nine novels, including Quiet Chaos, which was translated into twenty languages and won the Premio Strega, the Prix Fémina, and the Prix Méditerranée. Veronesi is only the second author in the Premio Strega's history to win the prize twice.

Praise For…

“Mr. Veronesi sustains the opening scene’s excitement as he stirs a psychological ferment….The overpowering sense of fragility that touches Pietro and Claudia is superbly conveyed by translator Michael F. Moore. Let’s hope more novels from Mr. Veronesi’s back catalog join ‘Quiet Chaos’ in translation.” — Wall Street Journal

“Dazzling.... Like a literary Fellini, Veronesi brings to life the larger-than-life human comedy as only an Italian would dare, uproariously funny in the face of stark tragedy. It’s a reading experience not to be missed.” — Shelf Awareness

“[An] absorbing second novel.” — Publishers Weekly