Description

Winner of the 2025 PEN Translation Prize

A lonely little boy’s unlikely friendship with his grandparents’ grizzled old groundskeeper leads him down the rabbit hole from a life lived solely in books to a wonderful and terrifying hell of long-buried secrets, shadowy partisans, murdered Nazis, thefts, lies, doppelgangers, bloodthirsty slugs, and the unquiet dead.

Publisher Review

Winner of the 2008 Grinzane Cavour Prize —- ‘A curious teenager’s conversations with an odd groundskeeper yield far more than he’d bargained for […] Kudos to translator Moore, whose consummate conversion allows readers to luxuriate in the language of even deceptively minor moments: “amid the heads of lettuce, languished the halved cadavers of red slugs.” A gripping, beguiling, occasionally discomfiting, and utterly fascinating tour de force.’ Kirkus Reviews, starred review —- ‘One reads it quickly, in one go, but then it stays to “breathe” in one’s soul for days, as though it were to a living thing – just like the turquoise poison referenced in the title, once it’s dissolved in water. A writer of great talent, Mari seems to have even outdone himself.’ Carla Benedetti, L’Espresso —- ‘The theme of the “double”, in its various forms, is a favorite subject of the modern Western literary imagination (from Hoffmann to von Chamisso, from Stevenson to Wilde, and many others). But no writer, I believe, has managed to conceive in this regard what Michele Mari offers us in his new novel, Verdigris.’ Stefano Giovanardi, la Repubblica —- ‘There are books before which there came other books, and then there are books before which – and after which, too – there’s nothing else.’ Giorgio Vasta, Nazione Indiana —- Praise for the Author —- ‘There’s a Calvino-esque blend of the playful and the rigorous to You, Bleeding Childhood. A uniquely refreshing book . . . idiosyncratic, amusing and moving.’ The Guardian —- ‘If I were to give a book award to a living Italian writer, man or woman, I’d pick Michele Mari.’ Domenico Starnone, I-Italy —- ‘The greatest living Italian writer.’ Andrea Coccia, Linkiesta —- ‘The charm that Mari exercises on his readers, from the most devoted to the most distracted, is incredible . . . More than anyone else, Michele Mari represents today a model of writer that seems on the point of disappearing – fully literary, lofty, in short, twentieth-century.’ Sara Marzullo, Esquire