Can you hear me? - Elena Varvello

'Utterly gripped me from beginning to end' Victoria Hislop
'Move over Ferrante, there's a new Elena in town' Independent
'There is much beauty and sadness in this slim novel' The Times

In the August of 1978, the summer I met Anna Trabuio, my father took a girl into the woods...
I was sixteen.
He had been gone a long time already, but that was it - not even a year after he lost his job and that boy disappeared - that was when everything broke.

1978.
Ponte, a small community in Northern Italy. An unbearably hot summer like many others.

Elia Furenti is sixteen, living an unremarkable life of moderate unhappiness, until the day the beautiful, damaged Anna returns to Ponte and firmly propels Elia to the edge of adulthood.

But then everything starts to unravel.

Elia's father, Ettore, is let go from his job and loses himself in the darkest corners of his mind.
A young boy is murdered.
And a girl climbs into a van and vanishes in the deep, dark woods...

Translated by Alex Valente | Winner of an English PEN Award