Party with Cassowary
A Novel
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Party with Cassowary
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Summary
“Surprising and spellbinding.” —Vincenzo Latronico, author of Perfection
It’s the beginning of summer. Isa M., a second-year lit major, is throwing a party at her family’s lavish villa on the outskirts of Turin. The music is loud, the prosecco is flowing, and the garden is packed with friends—and maybe a few gate-crashers. The only guest who hasn’t arrived yet is Ezio, the boy she’s falling in love with.
Then an anonymous gift turns up on the kitchen counter: a bottle of Barbera with a card that reads, Unless someone touches the cassowary before 1am, Ezio dies.
At first it seems like a prank. Except Ezio still isn’t answering his phone. And no one’s sure who brought the bottle. Or what, exactly, a cassowary is. (Or why the neighbors are keeping one in the surrounding woods!)
As the hours tick by—and the undergrads wade further into a heady mix of alcohol, drugs, jealousy, lust, and dread—the gravity of the dare sinks in. Shifting among a chorus of students (including a Tarot reader, a would-be philosopher in a parka, a perennial tag-along who’s been exiled from the group chat, and a shy artist from Puglia caught up in the night’s seductive chaos), Party with Cassowary captures the precarity of early adulthood with piercing wit and a generous heart.
Winner of Italy’s Premio Mondello, with rights sold in thirteen countries, Leonardo San Pietro’s debut is an existential thriller and a magnetic, mannerist portrait of a generation crippled by the weight of desire and decision.
Critic reviews
"An electrifying debut, Party with Cassowary captures the feverish logic of youth—all its hunger and cruelty—with rare intelligence and style. Leonardo San Pietro writes with a sensual, searching intensity, each character's voice bending to the pressure of the moment. Absolutely gripping—seductive, cerebral, and charged with real danger. I finished it stunned." —Stephanie Danler, author of Sweetbitter
"Party with Cassowary is a surprising and spellbinding novel, its language razor-sharp and filled with little delights. San Pietro manages to capture, with graceful command, those very last days of youth—when everything feels charged with wonder and meaning, when life brims with poetry and adventure and a mysterious sense of freedom." —Vincenzo Latronico, author of Perfection
"Party with Cassowary is a reminder that a youth misspent is a youth well spent. I downed this fizzy, bittersweet spritz of a novel in a single gulp." —Andrew Ridker, author of Hope
"With a dark, offbeat brilliance that slips between the paradoxical and the philosophical, and a style that feels almost elusive, the author pushes readers to ask: what shape would the future take, if it suddenly stood right in front of us? For Leonardo San Pietro, the future looks like a cassowary." —Jury of the POP Opera Prima! Prize
"Party with Cassowary is a surprising and spellbinding novel, its language razor-sharp and filled with little delights. San Pietro manages to capture, with graceful command, those very last days of youth—when everything feels charged with wonder and meaning, when life brims with poetry and adventure and a mysterious sense of freedom." —Vincenzo Latronico, author of Perfection
"Party with Cassowary is a reminder that a youth misspent is a youth well spent. I downed this fizzy, bittersweet spritz of a novel in a single gulp." —Andrew Ridker, author of Hope
"With a dark, offbeat brilliance that slips between the paradoxical and the philosophical, and a style that feels almost elusive, the author pushes readers to ask: what shape would the future take, if it suddenly stood right in front of us? For Leonardo San Pietro, the future looks like a cassowary." —Jury of the POP Opera Prima! Prize
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