Books

Sold 250,000 copies since publication

‘Women – in love and out of love, whose flesh knows fire and frost, whose spirit knows love and disenchantment – all of them, clever-hearted, replied to me, generous or weary, happy or broken, but they always replied, because they are condemned to love with every cell of their being.’

Through the narrative frame of the Orpheus myth, in a gallery of portraits each more compelling and intense than the last, we finally hear from the women. We learn of Fanny’s frustration, as Keats glorified her in his poems but didn’t want to share his daily life with her; poet Tess Gallagher’s sweet strong-will, as she loved everything about Raymond Carver and managed to bring a bit of light to the days of his illness; Jeanne Modigliani’s despair, as like her husband Amedeo she lived to paint, but could save neither him nor herself from the anguish of living; Alma Hitchcock’s  secret, loving and knowledgeable interventions, as she was the right-hand man in all of her husband’s movies; Edith Tolkien’s quiet and solid energy, as she lived her whole life at her husband’s side.

‘Alessandro D’Avenia may not follow literary trends, but each of his books has been an unexpected runaway success. […] As for the great writers and artists he writes about here, the book brings them down from the pedestal on which we have placed them and reminds us that they are men and women, just like us.’
– La Stampa