Author(s): Claudia Durastanti

Novel | Translated fiction | Western Europe

A bold, contemporary and urgent novel from a renowned Italian writer that examines silence in different forms, immigration, family and social class.

A funny and profound work of fiction about being a stranger in your own family and life.

Every family has its own mythology, but in this family none of the myths match up. Claudia's mother says she met her husband when she stopped him from jumping off a bridge. Her father says it happened when he saved her from an attempted robbery. Both parents are deaf but couldn't be more different; they can't even agree on how they met, much less who needed saving.Into this unlikely union, our narrator is born. She comes of age with her brother in this strange, and increasingly estranged, household split between a village in southern Italy and New York City.

Without even sign language in common, family communication is chaotic and rife with misinterpretations, by turns hilarious and devastating.

An outsider in every way, Claudia longs for a freedom she's not even sure exists. Only books and punk rock-and a tumultuous relationship-begin to show her the way to create her own mythology, to construct her version of the story of her life.

Kinetic, formally dazzling and spectacularly original, Strangers I Know is a portrait of an unconventional family that makes us look anew at how language shapes our understanding of ourselves.

‘Formally innovative and emotionally complex, this novel explores themes of communication, family, and belonging with exceptional insight. Durastanti, celebrated in Italy for her intelligent voice and her hybrid perspective, speaks to all who are outside and in-between. Strangers I Know, in a bracing translation by Elizabeth Harris, is stunning.’
— Jhumpa Lahiri, author of Whereabouts

‘Brave and deeply felt... Here the novel is not only a medium of illumination, but also a buoy cast into the dark waters of memory, imagination, and boldly embodied questions. In other words, it is my favourite kind of writing, the kind that not only tells of the world – but burrows through it, alive.’
— Ocean Vuong, author of On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous

‘Claudia Durastanti’s writing is lyrical and sharp, underpinned with a searching gaze that turns the everyday into something darkly beautiful. Every page feels totally, absorbingly alive.’
— Sophie Mackintosh, author of The Water Cure

‘A fluid meditation on the instability of the linguistic and cultural myths we build our identities around. I loved the language; I loved the tenor of it. It captivated me.’
— Jo Hamya, author of Three Rooms

‘The complex, overflowing, intelligent self of Durastanti collects the fragments of that family life that has moved in sparks between Italy and the United States and makes it a new mythology, a new, daring and dazzling look at what has been.’
— Giulia Caminito, Corriere Della Sera

‘[Durastanti's] inventive approach yields touching portraits of the characters, while respecting their ultimate unknowability.’ 
— New Yorker

‘Fans of Jenny Offill and Rachel Cusk will enjoy this unusual work of personal mythology.’
— Kirkus Reviews

‘In this moving family portrait [Durastanti] depicts personal calamities and failings with frankness, but the glimpses of violence and loneliness throughout shimmer with a sense of acceptance and the “useless power of forgiveness”.’
— Vilma De Gasperin, TLS

‘There is much exquisite characterisation in Strangers I Know by Durastanti, as well as barbed and profound musings on the class system.’ 
— Buzz Magazine

‘Durastanti is a superb writer whose text is fluid, descriptions taut and original, whose whole novel gradually unfolds into a web of associations, possibilities and interwoven stories within stories that highlight how families, distant and near, misunderstand, confuse and love each other.’ 
— Rupert Loydell, International Times

‘This heterodox book breaks many literary conventions…Reading the book has an emotionally hypnotic effect, and despite its starts and stops, its digressions and regressions, it hardly matters whether it is a true story.’ 
— Joseph Peschel, Brooklyn Rail