Overview

In Caterina, Claudia Durastanti presents us with a Cleopatra for our times - no exotic queen courted by two lovers with the fate of an empire in their hands but a young would-be ballet dancer who now works in as a cleaner in a down-at-heel hotel. This is the Rome of the underclass, of illegal immigrants, gypsies and sex shops where life is a struggle for dysfunctional families and nothing comes easy, except disappointment. Every Thursday Caterina visits her boyfriend Aurelio in Rebibbia prison in Rome, where, following a mysterious tip-off to the police, he is being held in custody under suspicion of pimping the strippers in the nightclub he was running. What would Aurelio say if he knew that she went straight from the prison to meet the policeman who arrested him, and who is now her lover? Caterin's life is difficult and her environment challenging but she is a survivor and takes everything life throws at her without complaint. Caterina is very much a heroine for our times. AUTHOR: Claudia Durastanti is a writer and literary translator based in London. Her critically acclaimed debut novel Un giorno verro a lanciare sassi alla tua finestra won the Premio Mondello Giovani in 2010. Her writing has been featured in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Nero Magazine and Rolling Stone Italia. She's a former Italian Fellow in Literature at the American Academy in Rome. Currently she's a contributor to La Repubblica.

Full Product Details

9781910213964

Table of Contents

Reviews

'Cleopatra Goes to Prison is a small jewel.' Silvia Pelizzari in the Huffington Post - 'The best Italian writer this year is an American, Claudia Durastanti.' Laura Pizzini in Vanity Fair 'What is special about this book is that it drags the reader into an unpleasant story and makes him share the suffering of people he has nothing in common with.' Piersando Pallavicini in La Stampa

The best Italian writer this year is an American, Claudia Durastanti. -- Laura Pizzini, Vanity Fair ... a small jewel. -- Silvia Pelizzari, The Huffington Post

Author Information

Claudia Durastanti is a writer and literary translator based in London. She was born in New York and grew up there and in Italy. She has dual Italian and American citizenship. Her critically acclaimed debut novel Un giorno verro a lanciare sassi alla tua finestra won the Premio Mondello Giovani in 2010. She is the author of four novels. Cleopatra Goes To Prison is her first novel to be translated into English. She is one of the rising stars of Italian fiction. Christine Donougher was born in England in 1954. She read English at Cambridge University and after a career in publishing is now a freelance translator of French and Italian. Her translation of The Book of Nights won the 1992 Scott Moncrieff Translation Prize. Her translations from Italian for Dedalus are Senso (and other stories) by Camillo Boito, Sparrow (and other stories) by Giovanni Verga and Cleopatra Goes To Prison by Claudia Durastanti., The Price of Dreams by Margherita Giacobino and Venice Noir by Isabella Panfido.

Tab Content 6

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

Countries Available