The Hummingbird
‘Magnificent’ (Guardian)
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- 3,99 €
Publisher Description
Pre-order Sandro Veronesi's unforgettable new novel Black September, coming in August 2026
A BOOK OF THE YEAR FOR THE GUARDIAN: 'DEEPLY PLEASURABLE'
A BOOK OF THE YEAR FOR THE SPECTATOR: 'WHAT A JOY'
'Magnificent' Guardian
'A towering achivement' Financial Times
'Inventive, bold, unexpected' Sunday Times
'Everything that makes the novel worthwhile and engaging is here: warmth, wit, intelligence, love, death, high seriousness, low comedy, philosophy, subtle personal relationships and the complex interior life of human beings'
Guardian
'Not since William Boyd's Any Human Heart has a novel captured the feast and famine nature of a single life with such invention and tenderness'
Financial Times
'There is a pleasing sense of having grappled with the real stuff of life: loss, grief, love, desire, pain, uncertainty, confusion, joy, despair - all while having fun'
The Sunday Times
'Instantly immersive, playfully inventive, effortlessly wise'
Observer
'Masterly: a cabinet of curiosities and delights, packed with small wonders'
Ian McEwan
'A real masterpiece. A funny, touching, profound book that made me cry like a little girl on the last page'
Leïla Slimani
'A remarkable accomplishment, a true gift to the world'
Michael Cunningham
'Ardent, gripping, and inventive to the core'
Jhumpa Lahiri
Marco Carrera is 'the hummingbird,' a man with the almost supernatural ability to stay still as the world around him continues to change.
As he navigates the challenges of life - confronting the death of his sister and the absence of his brother; taking care of his parents as they approach the end of their lives; raising his granddaughter when her mother, Marco's own child, can no longer be there for her; coming to terms with his love for the enigmatic Luisa - Marco Carrera comes to represent the quiet heroism that pervades so much of our everyday existence.
A thrilling novel about the need to look to the future with hope and live with intensity to the very end.
THE NO. 1 INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER
Over 300,000 copies sold
Soon to be a major motion picture
Winner of the Premio Strega
Winner of the Prix du Livre Etranger
Book of the Year for the Corriere della Sera
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A 40-year-old ophthalmologist becomes enmeshed in a morass of family troubles and careless decisions in Veronesi's Strega Prize–winning latest (after Quiet Chaos). In Rome at the brink of the new millennium, Marco Carrera, known by his childhood nickname "the hummingbird" for his diminutive stature, is having an affair while his wife does the same. His parents were glaringly mismatched, and his siblings, one of whom died many years earlier, are depicted through the nonlinear narrative as depressed, suicidal, or just plain estranged. Rather than marrying Luisa, Marco's longtime love, he had opted for Marina, a flight attendant he first sees on a TV news program, during which she describes how she'd narrowly avoided a shift on an ill-fated flight. They have a daughter, but Marco endures years of disappointments and Marina's adulterous betrayals. Meanwhile, he's secretly struck up a correspondence with Luisa. A chaotic black comedy of blunders ensues as the narrative volleys back and forth between Carrera's youth and the present through dashes of poetry, emails, postcards, and dialogue, while running commentary from an omnipresent third-person chimes in with penetrating insight (on relationships: "It should be common knowledge—and yet it isn't—that the course of every new relationship is set from the start, once and for all, every time"). Cleverly structured like a jigsaw puzzle, the story's disparate pieces are overlaid and slowly developed, such as the details of Marco's sister's death. A senseless tragedy, splashes of levity, and unexpected poignancy bring this to a moving conclusion. Veronesi's dark modern chronicle shimmers with intelligence and flashes of pathos.
