Overview

A moving firsthand account of migrant landings on the island of Lampedusa that gives voice to refugees, locals, and volunteers while also exploring a deeply personal father-son relationship. On the island of Lampedusa, the southernmost part of Italy, between Africa and Europe, Davide Enia looks in the faces of those who arrive and those who wait, and tells the story of an individual and collective shipwreck. On one side, a multitude in motion, crossing entire nations and then the Mediterranean Sea under conditions beyond any imagination. On the other, a handful of men and women on the border of an era and a continent, trying to welcome the newcomers. In the middle is the author himself, telling of what actually happens at sea and on land, and the failure of words in the attempt to understand the present paradoxes. Enia reveals the emotional consequences of this touching and disconcerting reality, especially in his relationship with his father, a recently retired doctor who agrees to travel with him to Lampedusa. Witnessing together the public pain of those who land and those who save them from death, alongside the private pain of his uncle's illness, pushes them to reinvent their relationship, to forge a new and unprecedented dialogue that replaces the silences of the past.

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9781590519080

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Reviews

Subtle meditation and devastating detail combine in this journalistic memoir...A potent narrative that builds from matter-of-fact observation through horrific experience toward a metaphysical acceptance that is something like a state of grace. --Kirkus Reviews (starred review) Praise for On Earth as It Is in Heaven Enia, a playwright, is as adept at capturing the chaotic vibe of his native city...as he is at depicting the quick, furious violence of the boxing ring and the casual brutalities of boyhood. --New York Times Book Review A gripping multigenerational saga...in Shugaar's nimble translation, the disparate themes and story lines come together naturally...challenging and intensely emotional. --Booklist Remarkable...Enia writes with passion and, though his savage subject matter rarely permits it, humor...He gives his readers a fully realized world. --New Criterion

Praise for On Earth as It Is in Heaven Enia, a playwright, is as adept at capturing the chaotic vibe of his native city...as he is at depicting the quick, furious violence of the boxing ring and the casual brutalities of boyhood. --New York Times Book Review A gripping multigenerational saga...in Shugaar's nimble translation, the disparate themes and story lines come together naturally...challenging and intensely emotional. --Booklist Remarkable...Enia writes with passion and, though his savage subject matter rarely permits it, humor...He gives his readers a fully realized world. --New Criterion

Author Information

Davide Enia was born in 1974 in Palermo. He has been a journalist and sports reporter and has written, directed, and performed in plays for the stage and the radio, and has been honored with the Ubu Prize, the Tondelli Award and the ETI Award, Italy's three most prestigious theater prizes. He lives and cooks in Rome. Antony Shugaar is a writer and translator. His recent translations include Kill the Father by Sandrone Dazieri, Ferocity by Nicola Lagioia and Everything is Broken Up and Dances by Edoardo Nesi and Guido Maria Brera.

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