A moving but unsentimental examination of one womans life as she navigates life after warIts Christmas Eve and twenty-seven-year-old Manuela Paris is returning home to a seaside town outside Rome. Years ago, she left to become a soldier. Then, Manuela was fleeing an unhappy, rebellious adolescence; with anger, determination, and sacrifice she painstakingly built the life she dreamed of as a platoon commander in the Afghan desert.
Now, shes fleeing something else entirely: the memory of a bloody attack that left her seriously injured. Her wounds have plunged her into in a very different and no less insidious war: against flashbacks, disillusionment, pain, and victimhood.
Numb and adrift, she is startled to life by an encounter with a mysterious stranger, a man without a past who is, like her, suspended in his own private limbo of expectation and hope. Their relationship—confusing, invigorating—forces her to confront her past and the secrets she, and those closest to her, are hiding.
In chapters that toggle between Manuela at home, grappling with her new life, and Manuela in Afghanistan, coming to terms with her role as a leader of fighting men and a peacemaker in a country that doesnt seem to want her help, Melania G. Mazzucco limns a story of love and loss, death and resistance in terms both surprising and cathartic. Limbo asks its readers, no less than its protagonist, what it means to be a daughter, a sister, a woman, a citizen, a soldier—or, more simply, a human.
Praise for
Limbo“Mazzucco dazzles in her latest novel, treating readers to a wonderfully paced love story set against a backdrop of modern warfare. On Christmas Eve, Sgt. Manuela Paris has returned to her home, a beach town outside of Rome, still recovering from serious injuries from an attack in the final days of her posting as a platoon leader in Afghanistan. The narrative smoothly alternates between Manuela at home with her family, which includes her vivacious sister Vanessa, and her first-person account of her time in the field. While Manuela copes with her injuries and the undetermined future of her military career (a career that had given her the "certainty of having a destiny" after an unhappy, defiant childhood), an encounter with a mysterious stranger, a solitary guest at the Bellavista Hotel whom she can observe from her window, jolts Manuela back to life in ways she never expected. Her training as a soldier means her assessments are clear-eyed and unsentimental, which only adds to their emotional weight. Mazzuccos finely drawn portraits of soldiers are excellent, but her aim is broader: a love story for rational people, providing complex answers to universal questions about recovering from trauma.” —
Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Manuela Paris springs off the page of this new novel from Mazzucco, as the reader is drawn into the world of this fierce, determined young woman. . . With exceptional writing and a masterly grasp of storytelling, Mazzucco offers such a realistic portrayal of the war in Afghanistan and its aftermath that you would bet he was actually there, living through it all. An excellent translation, too.” —
Library Journal“The novel fills an important gap in addressing the lives of female soldiers (and non-American ones) . . . An important addition to 21st-century war literature.” —
Kirkus Reviews“Mazzuccos novels are always something separate from their ‘plots. They are life itself, life that spreads itself impetuously . . . ‘Limbo is a place where souls wander, knowing that they cannot aspire to a higher realm. But, in their incompleteness, they know that there exists a reality where desire, hope, and love are neither illicit nor prohibited. Mazzucco represents this human tension: all the more significant when it rises, as in the cases of the characters of this novel, from beneath; but always present for anyone who exists on the other side of silly fairy tales.” —Alberto Asor Rosa,
La Repubblica“[
Limbo has] all the characteristics of a grand contemporary novel, of the kind we havent read in years . . .
Limbo must be read (its masterful and precise language, its delightful dialogue aside) because the book offers a great deal of food for thought: on what we are and how we tackle our own existence in this world.” —Wlodek Goldkorn,
LEspresso“Reading Melania G. Mazzuccos
Limbo—so realistic, so immersed in the modern world and so sensitive to the facts on the ground in Afghanistan today—is an extraordinary experience, and also a painful one. A lighthouse, crafted by the authors imagination, but fixed firmly on real life, on what is happening right now in these places. This is a powerful book, precise, coherent in its perfect construction of characters—Manuela above all. And Mazzucco here expresses herself in language that is thorough, rich with finely wrought details, where nothing is left to chance; and yet her language is also emotional and evocative. A great voice, with full breath, and possessed of wide-ranging objectives: an unequivocal masterpiece. I wish I could write it all down in a notebook, read myself the words again, learn it all by heart.” —Noemi Cuffia,
Tazzini di Café“Courage is the only thing that cant be taught. You either have it, or you dont. Not merely the courage to rescue a handful of soldiers, but also the courage to fall in love . . .
Limbo . . . is a story of love and of longing. Between two human beings, between a human being, the family she is born into, and the family she has chosen; between her own expectations and possibilities, and the expectations and possibilities of her generation . . . Mazzucco . . . unspools a story at once potent, sweet, and broken.” —Chiara Valerio,
Vanity Fair (Italy)"Whats thrumming through the pages of Limbo is a great unease, which troubles the whole more than is immediately apparent, given the narratives momentum. This isnt a novel about the war in Afghanistan—or not only that. It pushes us to reflect on responsibility, on the challenges we put ourselves up to, on the traces they leave in us and, more fleetingly, on the outside world.” —Paolo Di Paolo,
Il Sole 24 Ore“[Mazzucco] documents with a kind of maniacal scrupulousness, but its the quality of the narration that transfigures the material . . . Though we know from the very first how it will end, tension builds page by page, supported by the linguistic flexibility of her various tones, by the quality of a thousand details, from her ability to make each individual destiny a choral one . . . Few Italian writers are capable of producing such broad and specifically weighty works. A great demonstration of force and maturity.” —Ernesto Ferrero,
TTL“Mazzucco renders both Lazios landscape, its dilapidated coast, and Afghanistans, infinite and desolate, impeccably. She is peerless in her movements between the Italian family and the platoon of men that Manuela commands.” —Massimo Onofri,
Avvenire Praise for Vita:
“[Vita is] commanding and moving . . . [and] full of pungent fictional details.” —The New Yorker
“Mazzucco, in Virginia Jewisss rich translation, comes across as a supple stylist with a strong sensory gift. Moreover, her narrative has an engaged intensity. Tracking these lives, the traces of their passage, is clearly a mission, not just a search for interesting subject matter.” —Sven Birkets, The New York Times
“A beautiful and moving saga, a lyrical epic, profoundly existential, full of illusion, hope, and heartache.” —Giovanni Pacchiano, Il Sole 24 Ore
“No battles are lost so long as there are still books like those written by Melania Mazzucco.”—Ponç Puigdevall, El Pais
“Vita is a carousel of figures with alternating choral and solo scenes, a fresco rich in details, where every sentence is stunningly dense with action, images, and thoughts. Thanks to her soaring imagination, Mazzucco fuses documentary and story in her account of a sliver of the epic Italian migration to America, full of daily heroic deeds, dedication to work, organized and random crime, benevolent solidarity, and ruthless acts.” —Enzo Golino, La Rivista dei Libri
“Melania Mazzucco is like a hurricane dragging us into other ages and other dimensions with an incredible and total command of language.” —LExpress
“A fictionalized portrait of the authors heroic young ancestors, immigrants to America from Italy. The hardscrabble journey of two immigrants to Ellis Island from Naples in 1903 form the backbone of Italian novelist Mazzuccos . . . tale: the not-yet-12-year-old boy called Diamante and his nine-year-old cousin Vita, disgorged along with 2,000 other passengers from the Republic, and summoned to the Prince Street boarding house owned by Vitas grocer father, Agnello, to work. There is little enjoyment of childhood for these Little Italy immigrants: Vita helps Agnellos American Circassian mistress, Lena, cook and clean for the boarders (Agnello has a wife back in Tufo), while Diamante has to prove how tough he is by doing dangerous odd jobs such as robbing graves for the suave thuggish boarder, Rocco, who becomes a successful Mafia head. Vita and Diamante swear eternal love for each other, though fate tears them apart when Diamante must leave for work in Ohio, and delinquent Vita is sent to reform school for three years, the only education she'll have. Eventually, she ends up working in the Ansonia Hotel kitchen, marries Rocco (whos already married), then another boarder, before starting up a notable restaurant of her own. Diamante, meanwhile, is crushed by her disloyalty and disillusioned with the miserable lot thrown at uneducated and underpaid Italians like him. Alternate chapters weave in nonfiction elements, with Mazzucco recounting her search for the facts of her grandfathers story. Winner in 2003 of Italys Strega Prize, this teeming, nostalgic tale should find . . . American readers.” —Kirkus Reviews
“When 11-year-old Diamante and nine-year-old Vita set sail in 1903, they are among 2200 Italian immigrants heading for the Land of Opportunity. Mazzucco's sprawling and often heartbreaking story presents a 50-year odyssey that takes readers from the characters' arrival as penniless children to middle age. Along the way, we glimpse the poverty, bigotry, and limited prospects of early 20th-century New York City and see how social pressures collude in turning some newcomers into criminals and others into sweatshop laborers, miners, railway employees, or wily, sometimes unscrupulous businesspeople. Mazzucco uses her own family history as the starting point in this intense, dramatic tale. In fact, she weaves her investigation into what actually happened to the real Vita and Diamante into the fictional world she has created . . . Rich details provide a harrowing glimpse into the era's political and social milieu. Winner of Italys prestigious Strega Prize, this fascinating and moving novel is highly recommended.” —Library Journal
“Inspired storytelling drives this fictionalized narrative, which follows the Italian authors family to 1903 Ellis Island, where 12-year-old Diamante Mazzucco and his cousin Vita, age nine, evolve into star-crossed lovers striving to fulfill their destinies. Earning their keep in the squalid boardinghouse run by Vitas father, the two (along with other relatives) are more or less confined to Prince Street in Manhattan, where they are subject to a horrifying array of abuses and privations. Deeply in love with Vita by the time he is 16 and determined to earn enough to marry her, Diamante signs on with a railroad building crew and unwittingly begins four years of involuntary servitude under conditions that Mazzucco describes in unsparing detail; this underrepresented corner of the East Coast immigrant experience feels as fresh here as it is brutal. Vita, meanwhile, survives three years in reform school and betrayal by a man who seduces her. The narrative throughout is lively, deeply affecting and complex, involving dozens of striving minor characters, some of whom turn to crime. Four-time novelist Mazzucco also interjects nonfiction chapters that relate her search for family members in Italy and the U.S., adding a resonant sleuthing element that further distinguishes this literary take on early-20th-century Italian-America and enduring love.” —Publishers Weekly