Ischiano Scalo. A place where even the main road out to the nearest big town gives up after a couple of miles, where escape from a life of boredom and emptiness is almost impossible. Forced into crimes he never wanted to commit, Pietro reaches crisis point when his parents ignore his pleas for help and his schoolteacher turns her back on him - in desperation, he reaches out for attention, and finds instead a terrible revenge.

Escape from Ischiano Scalo comes at a price. Life there will never be the same again.

About the Author
Niccolo Ammaniti was born in Rome in 1966. He is the author of six novels translated into English and two short story collections. Several of his novels have been adapted for film, including Steal You Away, which was longlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, The Crossroads, winner of the Premio Strega Prize 2007, and the international bestseller I'm Not Scared, which won the prestigious Italian Viareggio-Repaci Prize for Fiction and has been translated into thirty-five languages.

Reviews
Another powerful story about the loss of childhood innocence in small-town Italy from Rome-born author Ammaniti - who wrote the highly acclaimed I'm Not Scared. * * Financial Times * *
Niccolo Ammaniti's second novel, Steal You Away, published in Italy in 1999, is also about a boy faced with difficult moral choices that will define his future. It traces the path to Ammaniti's follow-up, I'm Not Scared, the global bestseller that became a hit film in 2003. In the end, we get two heart-wrenching love stories for the price of one. This young storyteller exercises the confidence, honesty and sensibility of a master without spilling a drop of sweat. * * The Times * *
Again Ammaniti uncovers the tragedy in ordinary people's lives - the awful gap between dream and reality - and skewers it to the page with such elegance that you cannot tear yourself away from the inexorable trajectory of ruin. * * The Big Issue * *
Ammaniti...has the gift of authority combined with an instinctive understanding of how his characters will behave in every circumstance...Protracted and entertaining, it is also intensely moving at its accelerated conclusion....This is a Brueghel, a canvas...each character's pathway affecting the poise of the whole spun web, the very weightlessness of which gives the book what Milan Kundera calls the unbearable lightness of being. -- Tom Adair



Book Information
ISBN 9781841959320
Author Niccolo Ammaniti
Format Paperback
Page Count 416
Imprint Canongate Books
Publisher Canongate Books
Weight(grams) 277g
Dimensions(mm) 198mm * 129mm * 25mm