Steal You Away

Steal You Away

by Jonathan Hunt (Translator), Niccolò Ammaniti (Author)

Synopsis

In swampy Ischiano Scalo, where the adults are all losers and the children dream of escape, meek little Pietro is tested to destruction by the school psychopath, and is betrayed by his parents, his favourite teacher and, in his most self-fulfilling act, himself. As Pietro struggles against the bullies and revels in his friendship with Gloria (the prettiest and richest girl for miles), his lonely teacher, Flora, devotes herself to her catatonic mother, until Ischiano's one glamorous son returns to seduce and forget her. In the painful aftermath, Pietro's attempts to escape his own crushing sense of failure lead him to destroy everything he holds dear in one futile moment of hurt and anger. Through the eyes of a desperate boy and a self-aggrandising small-town Don Juan, Ammaniti gradually reveals his cast of grotesques, from idiot policemen to self-obsessed would-be starlets, terrified headmasters to lustful janitors. With charm and irony, he exposes the grand dreams and sad realities of these ordinary people living extraordinarily ordinary lives.

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More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 405
Edition: Main
Publisher: Canongate Books Ltd
Published: 01 Jun 2006

ISBN 10: 1841957747
ISBN 13: 9781841957746

Media Reviews
Another powerful story about the loss of childhood innocence in small-town Italy from Rome-born author Ammaniti - who wrote the highly acclaimed I'm Not Scared. * * Financial Times * *
Niccolo Ammaniti's second novel, Steal You Away, published in Italy in 1999, is also about a boy faced with difficult moral choices that will define his future. It traces the path to Ammaniti's follow-up, I'm Not Scared, the global bestseller that became a hit film in 2003. In the end, we get two heart-wrenching love stories for the price of one. This young storyteller exercises the confidence, honesty and sensibility of a master without spilling a drop of sweat. * * The Times * *
Again Ammaniti uncovers the tragedy in ordinary people's lives - the awful gap between dream and reality - and skewers it to the page with such elegance that you cannot tear yourself away from the inexorable trajectory of ruin. * * The Big Issue * *
Ammaniti...has the gift of authority combined with an instinctive understanding of how his characters will behave in every circumstance...Protracted and entertaining, it is also intensely moving at its accelerated conclusion....This is a Brueghel, a canvas...each character's pathway affecting the poise of the whole spun web, the very weightlessness of which gives the book what Milan Kundera calls the unbearable lightness of being. -- Tom Adair
Author Bio
Niccolo Ammaniti was born in Rome in 1966. He has written three novels and a collection of short stories. He won the prestigious Italian Viareggio-Repaci Prize for Fiction with his bestselling novel I'm Not Scared, which has been translated into thirty-five languages.