While the radio announcer reports new conflicts and atrocities every day and beggars line the pavements outside her comfortable apartment, the old woman struggles to maintain her grip on life. It is a ridiculous age, she tells an acquaintance. Almost everyone she used to know and love is dead. Only her ancient cat and her best friend Malvina are left, and Malvina is rapidly sliding into senility.
But the old woman’s real and constant grief is the loss of her lover, Nora, ten years ago. In this disintegrating world, her lifeline is an immigrant worker, Gabriela, the home help. But Gabriela is being hounded for money by her dysfunctional family, which includes the self-styled ‘terrorist’ Dorin. How far can an elderly and cultivated woman, still feisty if increasingly world-weary and prickly, allow herself to be drawn into the affairs of a young woman she does not entirely trust?
A brilliant evocation of the challenges of old age, Margherita Giacobino’s caustic and funny novel is a tragi-comedy whose unexpected and dramatic conclusion will leave the reader gasping.
Despre autor
Graham Anderson was born in London. After reading French and Italian at Cambridge, he worked on the books pages of City Limits and reviewed fiction for The Independent and The Sunday Telegraph. As a translator, he has developed versions of French plays, both classic and contemporary, for the NT and the Gate Theatre, with performances both here and in the USA. Publications include The Figaro Plays (Beaumarchais) and A Flea in Her Ear (Feydeau). For Dedalus he has translated Sappho by Alphonse Daudet, Chasing the Dream and A Woman's Affair by Liane de Pougy, This was the Man (Lui) by Louise Colet and The Woman, This Man(Elle et Lui) by George Sand. His translations of Grazia Deledda's short story collections The Queen of Darkness and The Christmas Present and her novel Marianna Sirca were published by Dedalus in 2023. In 2024 he has translated The Celestial City by Diego Marani and The Ridiculolus Age by Margherita Giacobino for Dedalus.
His own short fiction has won or been short-listed for three literary prizes. He is married and lives in Oxfordshire.
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