A bestseller and award-winner in Veronica Raimo's native Italy, Lost on Me is an irreverent and hilariously inverted bildungsroman from one of the most celebrated young writers working today. Born into a family with an omnipresent mother who is devoted to her own anxiety, a father ruled by hygienic and architectural obsessions, and a precocious genius brother at the center of their attention, our heroine Vero languishes in boredom in her childhood home. Peering through tiny windows while cramped in her family coven, Vero periodically attempts to strike out but is no match for her mother's relentless tracking methods and masterful guilt trips. Vero's every venture outside their Rome apartment ends in her being unceremoniously returned home. It's no wonder that she becomes a writer - and a liar - inventing stories in a bid for her own sanity. Spikey and clever, Vero delights in her own devious schemes. As she guides us through her failed attempts at emancipation, her discovery of sex and fixations with unwitting men, and ultimately her contentious relationship with reality, she also brings alive Rome from the 1980's through the early 2000's. With restless intelligence and covert tenderness, Lost on Me takes on the uncertain enterprise of becoming a woman.

The 100,000 copy Italian bestseller for fans of Rachel Cusk and Deborah Levy 'Deliciously enjoyable' Katherine Heiny 'I adored it' Naoise Dolan 'Hilarious' Roddy Doyle 'Thrillingly original' Monica Ali Vero has grown up in Rome with her eccentric family: an omnipresent mother who is devoted to her own anxiety, a father ruled by hygienic and architectural obsessions, and a precocious genius brother at the centre of their attention. As she becomes an adult, Vero's need to strike out on her own leads her into bizarre and comical situations: she tries (and fails) to run away to Paris at the age of fifteen; she moves into an unwitting older boyfriend's house after they have been together for less than a week; and she sets up a fraudulent (and wildly successful) street clothing stall to raise funds to go to Mexico. Most of all, she falls in love - repeatedly, dramatically, and often with the most unlikely and inappropriate of candidates. As she continues to plot escapades and her mother's relentless tracking methods and guilt-tripping mastery thwart her at every turn, it is no wonder that Vero becomes a writer - and a liar - inventing stories in a bid for her own sanity. Narrated in a voice as wryly ironic as it is warm and affectionate, Lost on Me seductively explores the slippery relationship between deceitfulness and creativity (beginning with Vero's first artistic achievement: a painting she steals from a school classmate and successfully claims as her own). Deceptively simple, its tenderness offset by moments of cool brutality, Lost on Me is a masterwork of human observation.

A tense, provocative and nuanced novel about a rape accusation in an idyllic commune I was in my sixth month when the girl came knocking. The girl came empty handed. On the threshold, her hair down, her jeans tight. 'Are you the professor's wife?' the girl asked me. 'I have to speak to you,' she said. 'The professor raped me,' the girl said.