An Italian Obsession

A boyhood crush becomes a lifelong obsession in this dark coming-of-age novel set in 1960s Italy.

Roberto Lucci first sees Alessandra when he is ten years old, standing in a school choir in Milan.

One glance is enough.

What begins as innocent fascination slowly hardens into something darker—an obsession that follows him through adolescence, loneliness, humiliation, sexual awakening, and the dangerous freedoms of 1960s Italy.

While Roberto struggles to understand desire, he is drawn into a world of decadent parties, manipulation, emotional cruelty, and reckless privilege. Girls like the seductive Yulia Polansky teach him how easily longing can become weakness. But no matter how far he drifts, Alessandra remains fixed at the center of his inner life: unattainable, mysterious, and impossible to forget.

As the years pass, Roberto's fixation deepens into a passion that threatens to consume everything around him—including his sense of self.

Dark, intimate, and unsettling, An Italian Obsession is a coming-of-age novel about desire, memory, vulnerability, and the dangerous stories we build around the people we love.