book cover of Heaven and Earth
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Heaven and Earth

(2020)
A novel by

 
 
'A devastating marvel of a novel'
Sunday Telegraph


'A highly enjoyable novel... Giordano is especially good on the textures, smells, heat and colours of the Italian south. These stay long in the mind, as does the way he writes about the obsessiveness of love, the way it dominates and distorts and the self-delusions and fantasies it gives rise to'
TLS


'If you're pining for an Italian break, then this might be the remedy: Heaven And Earth is rooted so deep in idyllic Puglia that you can almost feel the red soil under your sandals'
Daily Mail


'Raw and evocative: a breathtaking and poignant creation that will leave you itching under the skin'
Herald


'A stunning achievement'
André Aciman, author of Call Me By Your Name


'Perfect, moving, honest, brilliant, with characters who feel like old friends'
Andrew Sean Greer, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Less


'The perfect novel. Paolo Giordano is one of the handful of great writers working anywhere today'
Edmund White


Every summer Teresa follows her father to his childhood home in Puglia, down in the heel of Italy, a land of relentless, shimmering heat, centuries-old olive groves and taciturn, proud people. There Teresa spends long afternoons enveloped in a sun-struck stupor, reading her grandmother's cheap crime paperbacks.

Everything changes the summer she meets the three boys who live on the masseria next door: Nicola, Tommaso and Bern - the man Teresa will love for the rest of her life. Raised like brothers on a farm that feels to Teresa almost suspended in time, the three boys share a complex, intimate and seemingly unassailable bond.

But no bond is unbreakable and no summer truly endless, as Teresa soon discovers.

Because there is resentment underneath the surface of that strange brotherhood, a twisted kind of love that protects a dark secret. And when Bern - the enigmatic, restless gravitational centre of the group - commits a brutal act of revenge, not even a final pilgrimage to the edge of the world will be enough to bring back those perfect, golden hours in the shadow of the olive trees.

PRAISE FOR PAOLO GIORDANO
'Mesmerizing... Giordano works with piercing subtlety' New York Times
'Elegant and fiercely intelligent' Elle
'Elegiac, tender and mournful' Wall Street Journal


Genre: Literary Fiction

Praise for this book

"Ever since the publication of The Solitude of Prime Numbers, Paolo Giordano has stood at the forefront of international literature. His new novel Heaven and Earth is a stunning achievement and confirms him as an electrifying presence in contemporary fiction." - André Aciman

"A novel as ferocious as youth and as pure as a utopia." - Paolo Cognetti

"This is at once a lush picture of growing up in the Italian countryside, a highly original exploration of Christianity and the transmigration of souls, and a deeply affecting story of friendships under the strain of time and tragedy. Giordano’s best book yet." - Dave Eggers

"A brave novel." - Roberto Saviano

"Perfect, moving, honest, brilliant, with characters who feel like old friends." - Andrew Sean Greer

"Heaven and Earth is not just a magnificent novel – it's an act of faith in literature and in the rousing power of storytelling, an ode to the unknowable mystery that is the human heart. Novels like this are a rare find: you won't be able to forget it." - Elena Varvello

"A perfect novel. Giordano is one of the handful of great writers working anywhere today." - Edmund White

"An intense novel about passions and reasons, unbreakable bonds and reckless excursions. Giordano is a master storyteller." - Yiyun Li


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