The Day Before Happiness
  • Published: 18 September 2017
  • ISBN: 9780141984506
  • Imprint: Penguin Press
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 128
  • RRP: $19.99
Categories:

The Day Before Happiness

Formats & editions
Paperback
18 Sep 2017
EBook
7 Jul 2016
Hardback
15 Aug 2016
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A charming story of friendship, love, sex and memory from the bestselling Italian novelist

A young orphan boy grows up in Naples, playing football, roaming the city's streets and hidden places. The older boys call him 'monkey' because he can climb anywhere. He is alone, apart from Don Gaetano, the apartment caretaker, who feeds him, teaches him to play scopa, and tells him stories about women, history and the dark secrets of Naples' past. Then one day the boy sees a young girl standing at a window. It is an encounter that will haunt his life for years and, eventually, shape his destiny.

Lyrical and exuberant, told with the simplicity of a fairy tale and the intensity of a memory, The Day Before Happiness is the story of friendship, a city and what makes us who we are.
  • Published: 18 September 2017
  • ISBN: 9780141984506
  • Imprint: Penguin Press
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 128
  • RRP: $19.99
Categories:

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Praise for The Day Before Happiness

Powered by a combination of charm, warmth and simplicity... poignancy gives way to wry humour at regular intervals throughout the book, and the result is a brittle, lyrical, finely poised tragicomedy

Malcolm Forbes, Herald Scotland

An economically expressed yet vividly imagined coming-of-age story... De Luca is a native of Naples and in a sense this book is a love letter to the city

Roger Cox, Scotsman

High hopes in clear language, cautions against real evil, and scenes thick with poetic sentiment - these elements fuel the warmth to be found in De Luca's brief but affecting novels

The National

The only true first-rate writer that the new millennium has given us so far

Corriere della Serra