Synopsis

What you hold in your hands is no ordinary novel; it is an extraordinary debut in every way. It is the story of a life that seems to contain a hundred others, the story of a woman like so many others whom, after a few pages, you will feel like you've known her forever, a strong, restless, generous, sensual, and rebellious woman who for over forty years has pursued, sometimes even at the expense of her own happiness, only two guiding principles: freedom and curiosity. It is the story of C.'s life. Raised under the wing of a passionate and unpredictable mother and a father who was overwhelming in his absence, C., in love with the piano, books, and languages, begins to seek her place in the world at a very young age. Driven by an insatiable hunger for new experiences, she travels first to Germany to study German, then to Paris, where her unwitting fascination opens the doors to the circle of artists and bon vivants that gathers around Salvador Dalí. It's just the first turn of a relentless carousel of wanderings, encounters, and sentimental, erotic, and intellectual adventures, the beginning of the dizzying rollercoaster of ups and downs that will be her youth. Milan will bring her first great love and her first loss, New York will open her eyes and mind, Rome will provide her with a job and her dearest friends, and finally India, a fortunate landing place after a series of stormy relationships, will establish a new, unexpected order of things. The narrative unfolds in a vivid and feverish present, flowing impetuously in Caterina's intimate, simple, and powerful language, inevitably and joyfully drawing you along. The author draws heavily from her own experience and, applying a wise dose of novelistic yeast, constructs an imaginary autobiography, a novel of amorous, erotic and political coming-of-age in which echoes of The Art of Joy resonate, a literary gem that can be read in one sitting.