Giorgio Vasta: IL TEMPO MATERIALE

October 2008, 311 pages

Palermo, Sicily, 1978: a trio of eleven-year-old boys avidly follow the news of party leader Aldo Moro's abduction. In their minds the Red Brigades are warriors come to cure Italian people from their apathy. While living ordinary lives with their parents, they start planning terroristic attacks, and end up kidnapping and killing a schoolmate. Only the narrator's love for a young girl his age might offer him some redemption.

Giorgio Vasta's debut novel portrays the loss of innocence of a whole country as well as narrating an impossible love story.

After the successful sales to France (Gallimard), Germany (DVA), USA (FSG), UK (Faber and Faber), the Netherlands (Wereldbibliotheek), Czech Republic (Euromedia) and Spain (Random House Mondadori), rights to the internationally awarded novel by Giorgio Vasta IL TEMPO MATERIALE were recently sold to Hungary (Harmattan Kiado).

                Giorgio Vasta was born in Palermo in 1970. He lives and works in Turin. He is the editor and contributor of several anthologies. IL TEMPO MATERIALE is his first novel.

“The most impressive Italian debut novel in years” L'Unità

“Vasta is the worthy heir of Leonardo Sciascia” Satisfiction

“Il tempo materiale is, without question, one of the most important novels to emerge in Italy in the past ten years” Time Literay Supplement

“Il tempo materiale by Giorgio Vasta is first in the chart of quality fiction” Corriere della sera

“An impressingly mature and sophisticated debut novel” Le Monde