Between Two Seas (08 Edition)

The US debut of one of Italy's great contemporary storytellers: The photographer Hans Heumann travels to southern Italy in search of the light that has long attracted artists. There he meets Giorgio Bellusci, who dreams of rebuilding the south's most famous inn. The dark secret behind Giorgio's obsession will change the course of both men's lives.

The first of Carmine Abate's novels to appear in English and winner of the Fenice-Europa Prize for fiction, this is a touching journey that takes readers to the storied heart of Italy and accompanies them on an exploration into the meaning of memory.

"Steeped in the muggy summers and rich culture of Calabria, Abate's American debut is the intoxicating story of a man's lifelong obsession to raise from long-abandoned ruins a legendary family inn once visited by Alexandre Dumas. Giorgio Bellusci, born in 1927, is by middle age a relatively prosperous butcher and landowner who answer the demands of local gangsters for protection money with an outburst of murderous violence that sends him to prison. But his dream doesn't die, and he begins work on the inn after being released. The gangsters, meanwhile, want their revenge and blow up the almost reconstructed Fondaco del Fico. With some creative fund-raising and the assistance of Florian, the novel's narrator, the now elderly Giorgio succeeds in finishing his life's work. Abate populates this magical novel with a cast of captivating, emotionally complex characters drawn from multiple generations and from across time, and recreates the rhythms of life in a small village with poetic affection." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

Carmine Abate was born in 1954 in Carfizzi, an Italo-Albanian community in Calabria, Italy. He immigrated to Germany at a young age and then moved to Trentino, northern Italy, where he currently lives. His first book, a collection of short stories, was published in 1984. He has since published numerous prize-winning novels and a collection of poetry.