Description

‘A devastating marvel of a novel’
Sunday Telegraph

‘A highly enjoyable novel… Giordano is especially good on the textures, smells, heat and colours of the Italian south. These stay long in the mind, as does the way he writes about the obsessiveness of love, the way it dominates and distorts and the self-delusions and fantasies it gives rise to’
TLS

‘If you’re pining for an Italian break, then this might be the remedy: Heaven And Earth is rooted so deep in idyllic Puglia that you can almost feel the red soil under your sandals’
Daily Mail

‘Raw and evocative: a breathtaking and poignant creation that will leave you itching under the skin’
Herald

‘A stunning achievement’
Andre Aciman, author of Call Me By Your Name

‘Perfect, moving, honest, brilliant, with characters who feel like old friends’
Andrew Sean Greer, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Less

‘The perfect novel. Paolo Giordano is one of the handful of great writers working anywhere today’
Edmund White

Every summer Teresa follows her father to his childhood home in Puglia, down in the heel of Italy, a land of relentless, shimmering heat, centuries-old olive groves and taciturn, proud people. There Teresa spends long afternoons enveloped in a sun-struck stupor, reading her grandmother’s cheap crime paperbacks.

Everything changes the summer she meets the three boys who live on the masseria next door: Nicola, Tommaso and Bern – the man Teresa will love for the rest of her life. Raised like brothers on a farm that feels to Teresa almost suspended in time, the three boys share a complex, intimate and seemingly unassailable bond.

But no bond is unbreakable and no summer truly endless, as Teresa soon discovers.

Because there is resentment underneath the surface of that strange brotherhood, a twisted kind of love that protects a dark secret. And when Bern – the enigmatic, restless gravitational centre of the group – commits a brutal act of revenge, not even a final pilgrimage to the edge of the world will be enough to bring back those perfect, golden hours in the shadow of the olive trees.

PRAISE FOR PAOLO GIORDANO
‘Mesmerizing… Giordano works with piercing subtlety’ New York Times
‘Elegant and fiercely intelligent’ Elle
‘Elegiac, tender and mournful’ Wall Street Journal

Publisher Review

PRAISE FOR PAOLO GIORDANO 'Mesmerizing... Giordano works with piercing subtlety. An exquisite rendering of what one might call feelings at the subatomic level' New York Times on The Solitude of Prime Numbers 'Seductive and unnerving' Entertainment Weekly on The Solitude of Prime Numbers 'Elegant and fiercely intelligent... A singular love story' Elle on The Solitude of Prime Numbers 'Tender, cruel, beautiful, heartless, a brilliant story of desire and youth and death... A modern classic' Andrew Sean Greer, Pulitzer Prize-winner author of Less on The Human Body 'A profound tale of family, crisis and the passage of time, Giordano's novel is a cherished read' Harper's Baazar on Like Family 'Elegiac, tender and mournful' Wall Street Journal on Like Family A powerful tale of the bond between siblings and the tensions that underpin that relationship ... Evocatively written and sensitively translated, this powerful love story will carry you effortlessly from page to page * ITALIA magazine * A novel as ferocious as youth and as pure as a utopia. * Paolo Cognetti, award-winning author of THE EIGHT MOUNTAINS * Heaven and Earth is not just a magnificent novel - it's an act of faith in literature and in the rousing power of storytelling, an ode to the unknowable mystery that is the human heart. Novels like this are a rare find: you won't be able to forget it. * Elena Varvello, bestselling author of CAN YOU HEAR ME? * Magnificent, heart-wrenching, and utterly compelling. Heaven and Earth is the perfect novel. And I'm not saying this lightly. Perfect. Perfect. Perfect. * Andrea Wulf, Costa-winning author of THE INVENTION OF NATURE * An intense novel about passions and reasons, unbreakable bounds and reckless excursions. Giordano is a master storyteller. * Yiyun Li, author of WHERE REASONS END * This is at once a lush picture of growing up in the Italian countryside and a deeply affecting story of friendships under the strain of time and tragedy. Giordano's best book yet. * Dave Eggers, bestselling author of THE CIRCLE * Heaven and Earth is the perfect novel - always interesting, beautifully but not ostentatiously written, peopled with unforgettable characters, a powerful love story, animated by ideas, visually stunning. Paolo Giordano is one of the handful of great writers working anywhere today. * Edmund White * Perfect, moving, honest, brilliant, with characters who feel like old friends * Andrew Sean Greer, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of LESS * Ever since the publication of his debut novel The Solitude of Prime Numbers, Paolo Giordano has stood at the forefront of international literature. His new novel Heaven and Earth is a stunning achievement and confirms him as an electrifying presence in contemporary fiction. * Andre Aciman, Sunday Times bestselling author of CALL ME BY YOUR NAME and FIND ME *