Sharp, succinct storytelling and breathtaking prose combine in this new novel by the author of Ties, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and a Kirkus Reviews and Sunday Times Best Book of the Year.

Trick is a stylish drama about ambition, family, and old-age that goes beyond the ordinary and predictable. Imagine a duel between two men. One, Daniele Mallarico, is a successful illustrator who, in the twilight of his years, feels that his reputation and his artistic prowess are fading. The other, Mario, is Daniele's four-year-old grandson. Daniele has been living in a cold northern city for years, in virtual solitude, focusing obsessively on his work, when his daughter asks if he would come to Naples for a few days and babysit Mario while she and her husband attend a conference. Shut inside his childhood home―an apartment in the center of Naples that is filled with the ghosts of Mallarico's past―grandfather and grandson match wits as Daniele heads toward a reckoning with his own ambitions and life choices.

Outside the apartment, pulses Naples, a wily, violent, and passionate city whose influence can never be shaken.

Trick is a gripping, brilliantly devised drama, "an extremely playful literary composition," as Jhumpa Lahiri describes it in her introduction, by the Strega Prize-winning novelist whom many coinsider to be one of Italy's greatest living writers.

A FINANCIAL TIMES 'BEST BOOK OF THE WEEK' CHOICE A sharp, breath-taking exploration of love and relationships. Pietro and Teresa's love affair is tempestuous and passionate. After yet another terrible argument, she gets an idea: they should tell each other something they've never told another person, something they're too ashamed to tell anyone. In this way, Teresa thinks, they will remain intimately connected forever. A few days after sharing their shameful secrets, they break up. Not long after, Pietro meets Nadia, falls in love, and proposes. But the shadow of the secret he confessed to Teresa haunts him, and Teresa herself periodically reappears, standing at the crossroads of every major moment in his life. Or is it he who seeks her out? Trust asks how much we are willing to bend to show the world our best side, knowing full well that when we are at our most vulnerable we are also at our most dangerous.

Absolutely gripping from start to finish... a really stunning book. -Victoria Hislop Ties is the story of a marriage. Like many marriages, this one has been subject to strain, to attrition, to the burden of routine. Yet it has survived intact. Or so things appear. The rupture in Vanda and Aldo's marriage lies years in the past, but if one looks closely enough, the fissures and fault lines are evident. Their marriage is a cracked vase that may shatter at the slightest touch. Or perhaps it has already shattered, and nobody is willing to acknowledge the fact. Domenico Starnone's thirteenth work of fiction is a powerful short novel about relationships, family, love, and the ineluctable consequences of one's actions. Known as a consummate stylist and beloved as a talented storyteller, Domenico Starnone is the winner of Italy's most prestigious literary award The Strega.

The modest apartment in Via Gemito smells of paint and white spirit. The living room furniture is pushed up against the wall to create a make-shift studio, and drying canvases must be moved off the beds each night. Federi, the father, a railway clerk, is convinced of possessing great artistic talent. If he didn't have a family to feed, he'd be a world-famous painter. Ambitious and frustrated, genuinely talented but full of arrogance and resentment, his life is marked by bitter disappointment. His long-suffering wife and their four sons bear the brunt. It's his first-born who, years later, will sift the lies from the truth to tell the story of a man he spent his whole life trying not to resemble. Narrated against the background of a Naples still marked by WWII and steeped in the city's language and imagery, The House on Via Gemito - first published 20 years ago - is a masterpiece of contemporary Italian literature.