Description: Trick is a stylish drama about ambition, family, and old-age that goes beyond the ordinary and predictable. Imagine a duel between two men. One, Daniele Mallarico, is a successful illustrator who, in the twilight of his years, feels that his reputation and his artistic prowess are fading. The other, Mario, is Daniele's four-year-old grandson. Daniele has been living in a cold northern city for years, in virtual solitude, focusing obsessively on his work, when his daughter asks if he would come to Naples for a few days and babysit Mario while she and her husband attend a conference. Shut inside his childhood home--an apartment in the center of Naples that is filled with the ghosts of Mallarico's past--grandfather and grandson match wits as Daniele heads toward a reckoning with his own ambitions and life choices.
Outside the apartment, pulses Naples, a wily, violent, and passionate city whose influence can never be shaken. Trick is a gripping, brilliantly devised drama, "an extremely playful literary composition," as Jhumpa Lahiri describes it in her introduction, by the Strega Prize-winning novelist whom many coinsider to be one of Italy's greatest living writers.Brief description: Domenico Starnone was born in Naples and lives in Rome. He is the author of thirteen works of fiction, including First Execution (Europa, 2009), Ties (Europa, 2017), a New York Times Editors Pick and Notable Book of the Year, and a Sunday Times and Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year, Trick (Europa, 2018), a Finalist for the 2018 National Book Award and the 2019 PEN Translation Prize, and Trust (Europa, 2021). The House on Via Gemito won Italy's most prestigious literary prize, the Strega.