When Things Happen - Paperback

by Angelo Cannavacciuolo (Author), Gregory Pell (Translator), Jay Parini (Foreword by)

Michele Campo is living the bourgeois Italian dream. Now a speech pathologist in his forties, he resides in an expensive Naples home with his partner, Costanza, daughter of an upper-class family. Michele's own family origins, however, are murkier. When he is assigned to work with five-year-old foster child Martina, he grows increasingly engrossed by her case, as his own buried family history slowly claws its way back to the surface. The first novel by acclaimed Italian writer Angelo Cannavacciuolo to be translated into English, When Things Happen tells a powerful and intriguing story of what we lose when we leave our origins behind. It presents a panoramic view of Neapolitan society unlike any in literature, revealing a city of extreme contrasts, with a glamorous center ringed by suburban squalor. Above all, it is a psychologically nuanced portrait of a man struggling to locate what he values in life and the poor vulnerable child who helps him find it.

Author Biography

ANGELO CANNAVACCIUOLO is an award-winning Neapolitan writer and director. He is the author of several books, including Guardiani delle Nuvole (1999) and Il soffio delle Fate (2001).

GREGORY PELL is a professor of Italian at Hofstra University in New York, where he teaches language, translation, film, and poetry. He is the author of Davide Rondoni: Art in the Movement of Creation.