Vincenzo Chironi sets foot for the first time on the island of Sardinia - 'a raft in the middle of the Mediterranean' - in 1943, a year of famine and malaria. All he has with him is an old document as proof of his name and date of birth, but to find out who he really is he has had to undertake an even more stressful journey than the one he has just faced in the steamer from mainland Italy to Sardinia. At Núoro he will find his grandfather, a master blacksmith, who will act as a substitute father but also as an accomplice to him, and his aunt Marianna, who greets the unexpected arrival of a previously unknown nephew as an opportunity to redeem a life previously afflicted by misfortune. Years later, when the presence of Vincenzo Chironi in Núoro seems to have become taken for granted, as natural as the sea and rocks, his blood asserts itself. Vincenzo meets Cecilia, a beautiful girl with eyes of an undefinable shade who is a wartime refugee from elsewhere in Sardinia, and falling in love seems the only course open to either of them. Never mind that she is already engaged to Nicola, a boy with whom Vincenzo is indirectly connected by marriage through his aunt Marianna . . . Even if it may be a fact that "disobedience must involve punishment", it may also be true that love cannot avoid adding the latest link to an endless chain.

When Giuseppe Mundula first sees Michele Angelo Chironi across the corridor of a Sardinian orphanage, the reserved blacksmith realises he has found the son and heir he never knew he needed. And when, a few years later, Michele himself looks down from a church rooftop and sees the beautiful Mercede, the quiet orphan realises he has found the woman he will marry. So begins Marcello Fois' magisterial domestic epic of the lives and loves of the Chironi family, as they struggle through war and fascism. Deftly endowing familial horrors with mythical resonance, Fois creates a Dantesque triptych that inscribes the history of twentieth-century Sardinia onto a single misbegotten household.

Cristian is enterprising and determined. Maddalena is tenacious and quite able to imagine - and defend - her own future. Cristian and Maddalena have always known each other, and if fate had not gone awry they might already be married. But between them, exactly in the middle, there is Domenico: Cristian's childhood friend who has grown up alongside him like a brother. And when Cristian succumbs to the fate of the Chironis - that curse of illnesses, murders and suicides that has blighted his family over the years - it is Domenico that Maddalena marries. Taking his trilogy of the Chironi family up to the present day, Marcello Fois has woven a delicately detailed story, full of dormant passions, plot twists, betrayals and reconciliations. The epic scope and the dramatic tension of his writing means that while his trilogy might be the story of one family on a tiny island, it has a universality, a humanity and a power to speak to anyone of us.

Vincenzo Chironi sets foot for the first time on the island of Sardinia - 'a raft in the middle of the Mediterranean' - in 1943, a year of famine and malaria. All he has with him is an old document as proof of his name and date of birth, but to find out who he really is he has had to undertake an even more stressful journey than the one he has just faced in the steamer from mainland Italy to Sardinia. At Nuoro he will find his grandfather, a master blacksmith, who will act as a substitute father but also as an accomplice to him, and his aunt Marianna, who greets the unexpected arrival of a previously unknown nephew as an opportunity to redeem a life previously afflicted by misfortune. Years later, when the presence of Vincenzo Chironi in Nuoro seems to have become taken for granted, as natural as the sea and rocks, his blood asserts itself. Vincenzo meets Cecilia, a beautiful girl with eyes of an undefinable shade who is a wartime refugee from elsewhere in Sardinia, and falling in love seems the only course open to either of them. Never mind that she is already engaged to Nicola, a boy with whom Vincenzo is indirectly connected by marriage through his aunt Marianna . . . Even if it may be a fact that "disobedience must involve punishment", it may also be true that love cannot avoid adding the latest link to an endless chain.

When Michelangelo, a young autistic child, goes missing, Commissario Sergio Striggio is put in charge of the investigation. Searches turn up nothing, but there is an interesting connection with the mother's past: when she was a child, her twin brother also went missing, never to be found. However, Striggio is finding it difficult to concentrate on the case. He is waiting for his father, Pietro, to come and stay. The idea of the visit is torturing him. He fears having to reveal that he is gay - most of all he fears that his partner, Leo, will reveal his sexuality to his father. Pietro, however, has other matters on his mind: he has news of a devastating diagnosis to share with his son. And when his life with Leo unexpectedly collides with his investigation into Michelangelo's disappearance, it seems that in the complicated web of the small town of Bolzano, the truth behind the mystery cannot hide for long. Valse Triste is one of those rare novels in which the quality of the writing is matched by the pace of the narrative. Fois' language is precise and poetic, and the reader is kept guessing by twist after twist. Translated from the Italian by Richard Dixon Richard Dixon is a former barrister, and a literary translator from Italian. His previous translations include works by Umberto Eco and Giacomo Leopardi, and poetry by Franco Buffoni and Eugenio De Signoribus. With the support of the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union