Fish Don’t Close Their Eyes

Fifty years after a pivotal summer, a man revisits his ten-year-old self, uncovering the quiet truths that shaped him and the lingering echoes of a moment that changed everything. 

At the heart of the story is a mysterious, introspective boy with a quiet, aristocratic spirit that captivates the reader. At ten years old, the boy feels the stirrings of transformation. He knows he is growing up, yet his body betrays him—still too small, too incomplete to match the vastness of his instincts and dreams. Trapped in a shell that holds every possible future, he gazes out at the world of adults, yearning to take his place yet feeling the weight of his own unformed identity. 

Having just finished middle school, he spends a summer of transition and discovery on an island. His father, the son of an American woman who settled in Italy, has left for the U.S. in search of work but returns home, unable to sever the family’s deep-rooted ties to their land. 

On the beach, life and literature intertwine. After reading Don Quixote, the boy is convinced that love does not exist—“Dulcinea was curdled milk in the brain of the heroic knight.” But when he encounters a resolute girl his own age—“She had the firmness I later recognized in the voices of the blind”—his certainty begins to crumble. The introspective boy, “intellectual” and taciturn, is beaten savagely by three bullies for the “crime” of being favored by the young girl. It is she who tends to his wounds, revealing the foundation of a revolutionary character—justice that is “attentive to the individual case,” crafting judgments tailored to each situation. This justice, born of compassion for the wronged, can, paradoxically, be merciless in its pursuit of fairness. 

Lyrical, tender, and deeply human, The Fish Don’t Close Their Eyes is a meditation on the fleeting beauty of youth, the scars that shape us, and the enduring power of memory. 

Rights sold
France (Gallimard)
Spain (Seix Barral/Bromera)