From the author of Nives, a story of love, redemption, and resistance set in Italy during WWII

Tuscany, November 1943. The village of Le Case is miles from any big city and appears rooted in an earlier century. Seen from there, even the war looks different--it is mostly a matter of waiting, praying, and mourning. As a fierce winter threatens, an order is issued by the local Fascist authorities: all Jews must be rounded up and detained in the bishop's villa to await deportation.

Shy, solitary, and taciturn René is the town's cobbler. His only friend is the widow Anna, a woman with whom he has been secretly in love for years. When Anna's son joins the Resistance and is swiftly captured and shot by the Wehrmacht, the grieving woman vows to continue her son's mission, and one evening, she disappears into the woods. René later learns that a group of Resistance fighters has been ambushed and the survivors are imprisoned in the bishop's villa. A woman is among them, they say, a grieving mother and former inhabitant of Le Case.

René can no longer stand by and watch as his town, his country, and his one great love become victims of the Nazis and their Fascist enablers, and he decides to take action. Perhaps for the first time in his life.

Based on the true story of a nefarious collaboration between the Catholic diocese of Grosseto and the Fascist authorities, The Bishop's Villa is a masterful weaving together of fact and fiction by one of Italy's most exciting young writers.

Shortlisted for the 2022 Italian Prose in Translation Award

One of the most exciting new voices in Italian literature brings to life a hauntingly beautiful story of undying love, loss, and resilience, and a fierce, unforgettable new heroine

Meet Nives: widow, Tuscan through-and-through, survivor. Nives has recently lost her husband of fifty years. She didn't cry when she found him dead in the pig pen, she didn't cry at the funeral, but now loneliness has set in. When she decides to bring her favorite chicken inside for company, she is shocked, confused, and a little bit guilty to discover that the chicken's company is a more than adequate replacement for her dead husband.

But one day, Giacomina goes stiff in front of the tv. Unable to rouse the paralyzed chicken, Nives has no choice but to call the town veterinarian, Loriano Bottai, an old acquaintance of hers. What follows is a phone call that seems to last a lifetime, a phone call that becomes a novel. Their conversation veers from the chicken to the past--to the life they once shared, the secrets they never had the courage to reveal, wounds that never healed.

Nives reverberates with the kinds of stories we tell ourselves at night when we cannot sleep: stories of love lost, of abandonment, of silent and heart-breaking nostalgia, of joy, laughter, and despair. With delicate yet sharp prose and raw, astonishing honesty, Sacha Naspini bravely explores the core of our shared humanity.

There is a village carved into the rock of the Maremma hinterland in Tuscany and its name is Le Case. A dying country. A provincial trap. A microcosm of characters who are as vivid as they are universal, their days unchanging and at times tedious.

That is, until the small community is shocked by the arrival of Samuele Radi, born and raised in the heart of the old village, but lost long ago to the world beyond. His return home is the trigger for this magnificently sprawling, choral novel by the author of Nives.

Here is a story about destiny and attempts to change it, about dangerous passions, about games that involve love and death. Because in Le Case the human universe is at times unforgiving. A large cast of extraordinary and memorable characters (including Nives herself, from Naspini's well received English debut), complicated lives, and complex interpersonal relations: all of these overlap, collide, commingle in a story of secrets and lies. Fortunes are lost, revenge is plotted; there are religious conversions, betrayals, theft, joy, and misfortune; there is love and occasional tenderness. The very stuff of life animates Naspini's picaresque second novel, the book that catapulted him to national fame in his native Italy, and will surely bring many new readers to his distinctive, prize-winning fiction.