Party with Cassowary

A college party in the hills of northern Italy descends into a harrowing and outlandish rite of passage. Like the beguiling bird at its center, Party with Cassowary dares its characters—and its readers—to confront something dangerous, inscrutable, demanding to be touched.

“Surprising and spellbinding.” —Vincenzo Latronico, author of Perfection

It’s the beginning of summer. Isa M., a second-year lit major, is throwing a party at her family’s lavish villa on the outskirts of Turin. The music is loud, the prosecco is flowing, and the garden is packed with friends—and maybe a few gate-crashers. The only guest who hasn’t arrived yet is Ezio, the boy she’s falling in love with.

Then an anonymous gift turns up on the kitchen counter: a bottle of Barbera with a card that reads, Unless someone touches the cassowary before 1am, Ezio dies.

At first it seems like a prank. Except Ezio still isn’t answering his phone. And no one’s sure who brought the bottle. Or what, exactly, a cassowary is. (Or why the neighbors are keeping one in the surrounding woods!)

As the hours tick by—and the undergrads wade further into a heady mix of alcohol, drugs, jealousy, lust, and dread—the gravity of the dare sinks in. Shifting among a chorus of students (including a Tarot reader, a would-be philosopher in a parka, a perennial tag-along who’s been exiled from the group chat, and a shy artist from Puglia caught up in the night’s seductive chaos), Party with Cassowary captures the precarity of early adulthood with piercing wit and a generous heart.

Winner of Italy’s Premio Mondello, with rights sold in thirteen countries, Leonardo San Pietro’s debut is an existential thriller and a magnetic, mannerist portrait of a generation crippled by the weight of desire and decision.