Diego Marani Knihy

A young man plunges into student life, in flight from an overbearing father, in search of an identity of his own making. He is like everyone else in his quest for a future he cannot yet understand. His experiences, often comic, always innocently human, are an exploration of the concept of boundaries. But in choosing to study in Trieste, a city of many-layered histories and ethnicities, a city of brilliant sunshine and ferocious gales, he finds that life, and love, throw him more questions than answers. It is a tale of Everyman, but more than that: in the hands of Diego Marani, author of the celebrated New Finnish Grammar, this wry and affecting novel leads the reader on a nostalgic and thought-provoking journey made wholly individual by its evocation of place - the celestial city of Trieste. 'I did not think that one could weep for a city. But at that time I did not know that cities are women, one can fall in love with them and never forget them.'

One night at Trieste in September 1943 a seriously wounded soldier is found on the quay. The doctor, of a newly arrived German hospital ship gives the unconscious soldier medical assistance. His new patient has no documents or anything that can identify him. When he regains consciousness he has lost his memory and cannot even remember what language he speaks. From a few things found on the man, the doctor, who is originally from Finland, believes him to be a sailor and a fellow countryman, who somehow or other has ended up in Trieste. The doctor dedicates himself to teaching the man Finnish, beginning the reconstruction of the identity of Sampo Karjalainen, leading the missing man to return to Finland in search of his identity and his past.New Finnish Grammar won three literary prizes in Italy; the Premio Grinzane Cavour, Premio Ostia Mare and Premio Giuseppe Desi. Judith Landry's translation won The Oxford Weidenfeld Translation Prize 2012 and was shortlisted for The Independent Foreign Fiction Award 2012. In the USA it was shortlisted for The Best Translated Book Award.

As a child, Ivan and his father worked as forced labourers in a mine in Siberia, the father having committed some minor offence against the regime. He is then murdered in front of his young son, after which Ivan - who is a Vostyak - is struck dumb. 20 years later the guards desert their posts and Ivan walks off free. The Last of the Vostyachs won two literary prizes in Italy.

Domingo Salazar is a Dominican monk and Vatican secret agent in a near future theocratic Italy ruled by the Vatican. A cell of dissidents is helping sufferers commit euthanasia. His job is to root out such non-believers and heretics.