Bella Mia

Moving and unsentimental story of inner reconstruction after a devastating loss 


Shortlisted for the prestigious Premio Strega in Italy in 2014, this is the story of a broken family coming to terms, in the aftermath of the earthquake in L'Aquila in 2009, with the loss of one of them - a twin sister, a daughter, a mother - while living in temporary accommodation on the outskirts of the city. The terse and clean voice of the spiky, single, thirty-something female narrator wards off sentimentality while guiding us through the inner reconstruction undertaken by each character individually and by the family as a whole, letting us witness the extraordinary poetic power of love and the renewal of hope.