Sandro Veronesi was born in Florence in 1959. He is the author of nine novels including Quiet Chaos (2005), which was translated into twenty languages and won the Premio Strega, the Prix Femina and the Prix Mediterranee. His latest novel, The Hummingbird, was an instant bestseller in Italy, was voted best book of the year by the Corriere della Sera (Italy's most widely read newspaper) and won the Premio Strega. Sandro is only the second author in the Premio Strega's history to win the prize twice.
A masterpiece of love and grief ... Everything that makes the novel
worthwhile and engaging is here: warmth, wit, intelligence, love,
death, high seriousness, low comedy, philosophy, subtle personal
relationships and the complex interior life of human beings ...
magnificent - moving, replete, beautiful ... what makes the book
special is that The Hummingbird is such an intelligent meditation
on life, family, the human heart and the "dictatorship of pain"
that comes with grief
*THE GUARDIAN*
A masterpiece of articulation ... a towering achievement ... Not
since William Boyd's Any Human Heart has a novel captured the feast
and famine nature of a single life with such invention and
tenderness. Veronesi explores, with great humour, how the passage
of time both expands and expunges the impact of events. And, he
suggests, after the pounding of years it is only an individual's
character that determines whether or not the edifice will hold
*FINANCIAL TIMES*
Instantly immersive, playfully inventive, effortlessly wise... a
family saga that pays homage to the quiet heroism required by
day-to-day existence
*THE OBSERVER*
A big name in European literature ... Veronesi originally trained
as an architect and, rather marvellously, it shows: the structure
is inventive, bold, unexpected - slightly bonkers but elegant, and
cohesive ... conveys life's messy unpredictability: joy and
desperation, simple pleasures, moments of transcendence, much
reeling and confusion ... There is a pleasing sense of having
grappled with the real stuff of life: loss, grief, love, desire,
pain, uncertainty, confusion, joy, despair - all while having
fun
*SUNDAY TIMES*
A tender, beguilingly epic novel... The complex, subtle design of
the novel, with a patchwork of key episodes moving back and forth
through time, and its textual variety - partly made up of letters,
emails, transcripts of phone calls - disguise its saga-like scale,
its epic proportions catching you off guard. It's almost only once
you emerge from its acutely painful ending that you realise how
much of life you have witnessed - the vastness, as well as the
richness, of the story.
*NEW STATESMAN*
Veronesi's novel has been hotly anticipated by English readers. The
bird of the title is Marco Carrera, blessed with the gift of being
able to stay still while the world around him turns to chaos.
Life-affirming
*NEW EUROPEAN*
An inventive, a beautiful, complex book.
*IRISH EXAMINER*
The Hummingbird is a masterly novel, a brilliantly conceived mosaic
of love and tragedy. Veronesi creates a thought-rich and ultimately
comic meditation on human error and lost chances. It's a cabinet of
curiosities and delights, packed with small wonders, strange and
sudden turns, insights of great poise and unusual cultural
reference points. The Hummingbird in an object lesson in authorial
control. Veronesi truly knows and loves all matters of the
heart.
*Ian McEwan*
Somehow or other Sandro Veronesi pulls off the extraordinary feat
of making you believe he is writing for your ears alone. I cannot
tell you what The Hummingbird is about because that would be to
betray a confidence. But I can tell you it's a mightily clever
novel.
*Howard Jacobson*
I love The Hummingbird. A real masterpiece. A funny, touching,
profound book that made me cry like a little girl on the last
page.
*Leïla Slimani*
Long considered one of Italy's leading writers, Sandro Veronesi has
dazzled both readers and critics with novels that are not only
page-turners but profoundly literary. An heir to Italo Svevo, he
explores, from book to book, intergenerational conflict,
existential anguish and the passage of time. These themes, in
Veronesi's hands, burst with vitality. Trained as an architect, he
plays inventively with form, producing works that are
unconventional, disarming, and profoundly humane. With his latest
novel, The Hummingbird, he has re-written the family saga. Ardent,
gripping, and inventive to the core, it has already been hailed a
classic.
*Jhumpa Lahiri*
The Hummingbird is a profound story about the myriad ways in which
human passions collide with forces beyond human control. From its
first page to its last, it's as full of surprises as it is jolts of
recognition. Sandro Veronesi has overcome the ultimate, and most
difficult, of any novelist's challenges-created a story of such
depth and scope that it can stand unembarrassed alongside life
itself. It's a remarkable accomplishment, a true gift to the
world.
*Michael Cunningham*
Reading The Hummingbird is a spellbinding experience; it's so
clever, funny and deeply moving.
*Roddy Doyle*
Much more than a novel about a family - which its deceptively
unadorned surfaces might suggest it to be - The Hummingbird
portrays a subtle and intriguing political vision, depicting the
reach of history into the lives of people we might well believe are
outside history's notice.
*Richard Ford*
Sandro Veronesi is a writer I have always admired. He's funny,
smart, rueful, deeply feeling. The Hummingbird stands with his
finest work. It's some of the most poignant contemporary writing I
know of.
*Rick Moody*
An extremely beautiful and generous novel about time, family, home,
love and loss, passion and pain. Funny, heart-breaking, eccentric,
tender and completely brilliant. A triumphant, life-affirming
novel. Now I want to read everything by Sandro Veronesi.
*Edward Carey, author of LITTLE*
I love Sandro Veronesi's book, The Hummingbird. A real masterpiece.
A funny, touching, profound book that made me cry like a little
girl on the last page.
*Leila Slimani*
Sandro Veronesi's captivating novel is at once a gripping tale of
family bonds and a provoking meditation on fate and choice,
suffering and endurance, love and hatred, and the elusive nature of
happiness. I greatly admired its wit and erudition and its deep
charm.
*James Lasdun, author of SEVEN LIES*
I have known for quite some time that Sandro Veronesi was one of
the most skillful and profound Italian storytellers of the past
thirty years. But The Hummingbird is the decisive proof of his
sensitivity, of his extraordinary strength as a writer.
*Domenico Starnone, National Book Award Finalist author of TIES and
TRICK*
The Hummingbird is a book full of that roller-coaster ride that is
life itself, a succession of defeats and unexpected ascents.
Crucially, this is a novel that has the courage to pass the baton
to the new generations: in the sea of cynicism in which we all risk
to drown, it gives us a glimpse of a possible new future.
*Nicola Lagioia, author of FEROCITY (winner of the Premio
Strega)*
Outstanding. A perturbing masterpiece. Absolute beauty in the
smallest detail.
*CORRIERE DELLA SERA*
The novel flits back and forth between multiple decades of the
twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and the narrative is
interspersed with letters, emails and transcripts of telephone
conversations. Instead of the familiar pattern of trauma, grief and
healing, everything seems to happen at once and, indeed, keeps
happening. Relationships end before they begin, characters die and
are resurrected, only to die again. The reader's foreknowledge of
certain events could rob the plot of suspense, but Veronesi uses
dramatic irony to poignant effect, and still manages plenty of
twists and revelations... Excellent: Marco Carrera is a compelling
main character, a devoted father an oblivious husband, a dutiful
son and an inadequate brother. The novel's conclusion is a
beautiful study of the resilient bonds of flawed love.
*TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT*
Sandro Veronesi is a gracious, generous and mature writer, and
under his guidance the many narrative devices and chronological
leaps back and forth (also into the future) grow and mature into a
remarkable novel. This piecemeal approach shouldn't work, but
Maestro Veronesi is in control: it's a clever structure and the
plot twists and turns and thunders along. 'Il Colibrì' won the 2019
Premio Strega, Italy's top literary prize, and thanks to Elena Pala
(who was obviously born to translate this novel) it has become The
Hummingbird. It is Veronesi's ninth novel and his second Strega. If
you don't yet know the work of one of Europe's finest writers,
start here
*EUROPEAN LITERATURE NETWORK*
No other writer in Italy today can tell a story like Sandro
Veronesi.
*LA STAMPA*
Powerful and seductive.
*REPUBBLICA*
A great novel, vibrating with life and death, happiness and pain,
nostalgia and hope for the future.
*VANITY FAIR*
Reading The Hummingbird is like getting on a rollercoaster: it's a
vertiginous ride - almost to the point of physical pain - and then
you are left in a state of wonder.
*RADIO 24*
Reading The Hummingbird is not just a moving experience: it's
almost like a therapy session, a lesson in persevering, in letting
go of guilt to find ourselves again.
*HUFFINGTON POST*
Everything that has made Veronesi one of the greats is distilled in
The Hummingbird - just more mature and ambitious.
*ESQUIRE*
A wonderful book that covers so many bases, while the protagonist
keeps his position and moves little in relation to all that is
happening around him - he is 'the hummingbird'. The structure is
inventive and varied, and contains a rainbow of emotions, played
pizzicato across a lifetime of families at their best and worst.
It's wry, eccentric, perceptive, creative, nostalgic - you name it,
there's many a bell inside the pages that will ring just for you.
It really is as good as the stellar list of authors on the back
(Ian McEwan, Howard Jacobsen, Jhumpa Lahiri etc) who line up to
sing the praises of both the author and this extraordinary book
*BOOKBRUNCH*
|
Ask a Question About this Product More... |
|
