Swimming to Elba

Not many 27-year-olds publish a novel that sells 400,000 copies at home (Italy), with rights sold in 18 other countries, wins second place in Italy’s most prestigious literary contest and wins praise around the world. Even fewer 27-year-olds do this by using a game-changing understanding of working-class youth in Italy today. And no one has published a novel so graphic in its pleasures, so defiant in its message, as Silvia Avallone’s SWIMMING TO ELBA (Penguin; On-Sale: April 30, 2013; ISBN: 978-0-143-12365-1; $16.00; originally published as Acciaio in Italy in 2010).

SWIMMING TO ELBA describes a friendship between two young girls who live in the saddest part of a sad Italian town whose economy is defined by a failing steel mill. Both far more beautiful than is good for them, they realize quickly that their only ticket out is through their sexuality, and their dreams—not to mention the dreams of the friends, family and ever-present boys who love them—take the girls much further than they expect.

The book is graphic in its sexual content, and it’s also frank about the realities of life in working-class Italy today, revealing the hypocrisy of the Leftist, Socialist dream of a happy proletariat. This novel became a lightning rod for political discussion in Italy, has been covered with fervor all over Europe now, and her strong, lucid storytelling won Silvia Avallone second place for the prestigious Strega Prize.

Silvia Avallone came of age in a small town exactly like the one in the book, and her fiery, evocative prose reminds us that her message is personal: it’s a tough story with a lot of heart.

About the Author:

Silvia Avallone is a poet and novelist. This first novel won second place in the 2010 Premio Strega, and rights have been sold in eighteen countries. She lives in Bologna, Italy.

*Praise for SWIMMING TO ELBA*

“Powerful. As trenchant as it is true.”

—Le Parisien

“A galvanizing social novel, spacious and strenuous, like a film that would have been cosigned by Ken Loach and Gus Van Sant.”—Libération

“A beach read for strong-willed, independent souls.” —Kirkus

“Childhood friends Anna and Francesca have bloomed as adolescents, and they start to imagine a life beyond sleepy little Piombino, where they live. Maybe it’s time to take the ferry to the resort town of Elba. The friends’ dreams and disappointments might sound like the stuff of YA novels, but as this was runner-up for Italy’s Premio Strega and has been sold to 14 countries, something more must be going on. Watch.” —Library Journal

“Readers will devour this richly detailed, sensual bildungsroman.” —Booklist

“Avallone's engaging debut novel explores the troubled friendship of two sexually precocious young girl . . . Avallone does a good job of capturing the intensity of life-long female friendship and concomitant jealousies.” —Publishers Weekly

Included in the Los Angeles Times Summer Reading round-up