Infinite Summer

A novel set in Tuscany during the magical years when thousands of businesses blossomed, manufacturing objects for everyday life as well-made and beautiful as the Renaissance art that inspired them

Infinite Summer brings the reader back to Italy in the 1970s, a time when growth and full employment propelled smart and industrious young men to create companies devoted to design, architecture, automobiles, and more. Three men share a dream of building a textile factory from scratch. Ivo Barrocciai, the enthusiastic son of a textile artisan, embarks on an elaborate project: to build a luxurious factory that will be “the envy of the Milanese.” He recruits Cesare Vezzosi, a small building contractor, and Pasquale Citarella, a hardworking foreman from the south. Their relationships with each other and with their wives, their secret passions, their ambitions, and the compromises they have to make create a comical, moving fresco. It is at once a family saga and a love story—not only about people, but also about a reborn, ambitious, and courageous nation that revolutionized taste and fashion, a nation proud and thrilled with its new place in the world. Nesi shows us Italy at its best: the Italy with which we fell in love.

Edoardo Nesi is a writer, filmmaker, politician, and translator. He began his career translating the work of such authors as Bruce Chatwin, Malcolm Lowry, Stephen King, and Quentin Tarantino. He has written twelve books, of which Story of My People won the Strega Prize and L’età dell’oro won the Bruno Cavallini Prize. He wrote and directed the film Fughe da fermo, based on his novel of the same name, and translated David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest into Italian. In 2013 he was elected to the Italian Parliament’s Chamber of Deputies.

Alice Kilgarriff studied Italian and Spanish at Cardiff University before goingon to train as a translator and interpreter.She has worked with Bompiani publishing house, Welsh National Opera (Cardiff), Royal Opera House (London), and many academic institutions. She lives and worksin Italy and Wales