The Homecoming Party

It is Christmas Eve. Sitting on the steps of the village church in front of an enormous bonfire lit in celebration of the season, a father and his son exchange stories. The father speaks of life as an emigrant from Italy, in perpetual limbo between departure and return, between France and his home. The son tells of an idyllic childhood spent in a vivid, enchanting land marred only by his father's long absences. Each hides an awful secret concerning the fate of a mysterious man whose affair with the boy's older sister changed their lives. On this night of nights, as the long-buried details seep through each man's story, a shared truth will finally emerge.
Set in an Arbëreshë town in southern Italy and told in alternating first-person voices, The Homecoming Party is simultaneously a coming-of-age novel, a love story, and a heartfelt cry against the atrocious standards of living that force so many southern Italians to seek a better life elsewhere.
Here is an intense and moving novel about the difficulties of saying goodbye by one of Italy's greatest storytellers.

Carmine Abate was born in Calabria, southern Italy. He immigrated to Germany at a young age and now lives in Trentino, northern Italy. His first book, a collection of short stories, was published in 1984 and he has since published numerus prize-winning novels and a collection of poetry. His novel Between Two Seas was published by Europa Editions in 2008.

Antony Shugaar is the author of I Lie for a Living and Latitude Zero: Tales of the Equator. For Europa Editions he has translated Margherita Dolce Vita and Timeskipper by Stefano Benni, Valeria Parrella's For Grace Received, First Execution by Domenico Starnone, two novels by Massimo Carlotto, The Fugitive and Poisonville, and Carmine Abate's Between Two Seas.