Winner of the 2002 Prix Femina Étranger
Who shall ascend the mount of God? He who has innocent hands and a pure heart.
This is the story of a thirteen-year-old boy, recorded in his secret diary, whose life is about to change, and world about to open.
He lives in Montedidio, a cluster of alleys in the heart of Naples. He brings a paycheck home every Saturday from Mast’Errico’s carpentry to a house left empty by his father’s absence and mother’s illness. He writes on a roll of paper gifted to him by the local printer. He also carries a wooden boomerang that is neither toy nor tool, but something in between. Then there is Maria, the thirteen-year-old girl who lives above him and, like so many girls, is wiser than he and carries the burden of a secret life herself. There is also his friendship with a cobbler named Don Rafaniello, a Jewish refugee who has escaped the horrors of the Holocaust, who has no idea how long he’s been on this earth, and who is said to sprout wings for a blessed few.
It is 1963, a young man’s summer of discovery. A time for a boy with innocent hands and a pure heart to look beyond the ordinary in everyday things to see the far-reaching landscape, and all its possibilities, from a rooftop terrace on Montedidio.
This small novella speaks of the most common of men, the most marginal of lives, and yet becomes an echo and a reflection of the most important of all books.
La Stampa
De Luca’s prose is rich, succulent, full of life: one can almost taste it as ripe fruit. The tale captures its readers, and immerses them in a magical atmosphere.
—L’Espresso
The language of De Luca’s narrator is extraordinary, capable of recounting the most cruel tragedies, the most complicated thoughts, the most profound feelings, using the simplest daily expressions, yet avoiding sentimentalism.
—L’Unità
Once the book is closed, the indelible impression is that one has just listened to a sacred hymn…And in the end, one has attained heaven.
—La Repubblica
Rights sold
France (Gallimard)
Germany (Ullstein)
Israel (Hakibbutz Hameuchad)
Spain (Editorial Planeta)
US/UK (Other Press/Riverhead)
