Black September
The gripping, moving story of one unforgettable summer, by the international bestselling author of The Hummingbird
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Black September
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Narrated by:
'One of the most skilful and profound Italian storytellers of the past thirty years' DOMENICO STARNONE
'A perfect novel . . . Veronesi proves himself a master' LA STAMPA
Summer, 1972. At his family's summer house in Versilia, Tuscany, twelve-year-old Gigio Bellandi's life is changing: caught on the cusp of adolescence, he finds the familiar places and people newly strange and intoxicating. As he discovers the adult thrills of music and reading, Gigio begins to learn who he is and to see his family without the veils of childhood. And when Astel Raimondi enters his orbit - a girl who kindles dreams and feelings he could never have imagined - his young existence is changed forever.
But every new chapter is also an ending, though it is harder to recognise at the time. And as an unexpected storm starts to threaten the golden days of summer, Gigio's world will be overturned. Reconstructing that lost season with vivid intensity, Black September is an unforgettable coming-of-age novel about the fragility of innocence, the irreversible bloom of first love and the strange wonder of self-discovery, from one of Europe's greatest storytellers.
'[Black September] has everything: a vivid setting, jaw-dropping plot twists, dramatic tension that just builds and builds, and characters worth not just caring about but suffering with' RICHARD RUSSO, AUTHOR OF EMPIRE FALLS
'A luminous declaration of love for the fragile fault lines that shape us' CORRIERE DELLA SERA©2026 La nave di Teseo editore, Milano 2024 (P)2026 Hodder & Stoughton Limited
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Critic reviews
Black September is the first Sandro Veronesi novel I've read. It won't be the last. This one has everything: a vivid setting, jaw-dropping plot twists, dramatic tension that just builds and builds, and, best of all, characters worth not just caring about but suffering with (Richard Russo, author of EMPIRE FALLS)
'A perfect novel . . . Melancholic and playful like the boy Gigio, who, on the slippery edge of adolescence, holds centre stage from the beginning to the end of the story . . . Veronesi proves himself a master . . . Unforgettable'
Veronesi plays a mischievous god, scattering the beach with false leads, knowing that the combination of summer and first love blinds everyone, inside and outside the novel . . . Capturing this oscillation between enchantment and disillusion without sarcasm or bitterness is no easy task, yet Veronesi succeeds. He writes with gentleness, with tenderness . . . It reads like a mystery without formally being one: a story where we wait not for the resolution but for the detonation . . . a novel of waiting, of pure tension; to see how far a thriller can go without revealing its core. Black September becomes a luminous declaration of love for the fragile fault lines that shape us . . . This impulse - to make the ordinary extraordinary - has a name: benevolence. And it has always been at the heart of Veronesi's writing. Once again, he returns to the sea and invites us to look outward, where there is something vast, beautiful, and irreplaceable
Among the many memorable adolescences in literature, there now appears-and asserts itself-that of Gigio Bellandi, protagonist and first-person narrator of Sandro Veronesi's new novel Black September . . . Veronesi is a masterful seeker of those nuggets of memory - songs, comics, books, news shocks, the language of another time - all woven into a story populated by living, breathing characters
Sandro Veronesi is truly brilliant. He excels at enchanting the reader with his kaleidoscope of stories . . . As in Annie Ernaux's The Years, private events are interwoven with public ones . . . There are many literary virtuoso moments . . . The novel resembles an intricate structure assembled without nails or screws, a perfectly oiled mechanism
Magnificent . . . Pure delight. Rarely are shifts in narrative tempo, the intertwining of intimacy and social panorama, of historical-cultural precision and human universality, balanced with such intelligence as in this concentrated story
Exude[s] extraordinary charm . . . All the portraits in Black September are moving . . . Pain, tenderness and desolation are mixed together, along with touches of humour. One smiles, one laughs, one becomes attached to the narrator and his formidable family
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