CIATUZZU

Ciatu miu, "breath of mine". Voice and strength of the soul. His mom always called him like that. But one day an incurable illness took her away when little Ciatuzzu was just nine years old. With her, he had to say goodbye forever to his happy and carefree childhood.

From that moment on, he has been forced to deal with pain and absence, experiencing on his own skin what it means growing up without the love of a mother. Even Leto, the small village overlooking the sea where he lives, where the breeze mingles with the scent of jasmine, no longer seems like the same place. Fortunately, Ciatuzzu is not alone: grandparents and siblings, and moreover special people like the graveyard guardian and Lucia, a picciridda, are precious to him.

But just when he seems to have found a new direction in his life, his father, emigrated to Belgium, forces Ciatuzzu to join him in that foreign land, breaking his world apart. Far from Sicily and dearest affections, he soon realizes that fears must be faced to be defeated.

Through the extraordinary voice of a child of the 1960s, Catena Fiorello Galeano has written a moving novel about the coming of age and the power of memory. Because, even in the darkest moments, the indelible memory of our roots and those we love the most, will carry us far away.

Catena Fiorello Galeano was born in Catania, Sicily in 1966. Her exuberance and linguistic abilities projected her into the world of journalism. She has always written for newspapers, TV and radio programmes. In 2006, her first novel, Picciridda, a popular success, described against the background of a family's emigration to Germany in the Sixties, the enthralling story of an eleven-year old child, Lucia, left behind in Sicily with her grandmother. Among her other works: Cinque donne e un arancino (Giunti, 2020), at the top of the best-seller ist for weeks, and I cannoli di Marites (Giunti, 2022)