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Mohrbooks Literary Agency
Sebastian Ritscher |
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ACQUA SPORCA
Spanning continents and generations, this is a powerful novel about uprooted identities, legacies, and the clash between tradition and modernity, poverty and prestige. It is set in a country where survival means compromise and another one where myth and memory are a method to see reality.
After thirty years in Italy, Neela decides to return to Sri Lanka.
Her decision unsettles the fragile balance of her entire family across two continents and, especially, the delicate bond with her grown-up daughter Ayesha. Their relationship has always been strong and yet often lost in translation between the two different cultures and languages they grew up in.
Neela, after years working as a caregiver and domestic help in an Italian family in the hope of opening her own beauty salon, feels that she must return home to understand the person she has become. And perhaps she can finally banish the demon that haunts her.
Meanwhile, in Colombo, Neela's sister Himali is raising her adopted daughter as the embodiment of a lost dream, alongside her husband, a former communist militant, now an illegal immigrant in Europe.
Pavitra, the youngest of the Balasinghe sisters, has never recovered from the accident that crippled her at the dawn of her first love. She now dwells in an apartment lent by her sister, after a failed marriage. The exorcism once performed on her body to cast out her demons woke her devotion for divinity. Her daughter Hirunika is a disillusioned young woman, convinced she was born on the wrong side of the world. She cynically capitalizes on her body, dreaming of her cousin's life in Europe.
But in Milan, Ayesha is confronting her mother and above all the anxieties of a millennial adult, while struggling to build a career as a high-level photographer pressured by the international art scene to exploit the Sri-Lankan history and lore of her family to afford a place as BIPOC artist.
These constant efforts erupt in an uneasiness echoing her mother's, one that brings along anxiety, headaches, and depression as if it were a Western version of the Balasinghe family's illness.
Nadeesha Uyangoda was born in Sri Lanka. She is the author of L'unica persona nera nella stanza (66thand2nd, 2021), winner of Premio Sila and Premio Rapallo Special Prize "Anna Maria Ortese", and of Corpi che contano (66thand2nd, 2024). She created the podcast Sulla razza (Juventus/OnePodcast), has written for both national and international outlets, and is currently a columnist for Internazionale magazine.
Her decision unsettles the fragile balance of her entire family across two continents and, especially, the delicate bond with her grown-up daughter Ayesha. Their relationship has always been strong and yet often lost in translation between the two different cultures and languages they grew up in.
Neela, after years working as a caregiver and domestic help in an Italian family in the hope of opening her own beauty salon, feels that she must return home to understand the person she has become. And perhaps she can finally banish the demon that haunts her.
Meanwhile, in Colombo, Neela's sister Himali is raising her adopted daughter as the embodiment of a lost dream, alongside her husband, a former communist militant, now an illegal immigrant in Europe.
Pavitra, the youngest of the Balasinghe sisters, has never recovered from the accident that crippled her at the dawn of her first love. She now dwells in an apartment lent by her sister, after a failed marriage. The exorcism once performed on her body to cast out her demons woke her devotion for divinity. Her daughter Hirunika is a disillusioned young woman, convinced she was born on the wrong side of the world. She cynically capitalizes on her body, dreaming of her cousin's life in Europe.
But in Milan, Ayesha is confronting her mother and above all the anxieties of a millennial adult, while struggling to build a career as a high-level photographer pressured by the international art scene to exploit the Sri-Lankan history and lore of her family to afford a place as BIPOC artist.
These constant efforts erupt in an uneasiness echoing her mother's, one that brings along anxiety, headaches, and depression as if it were a Western version of the Balasinghe family's illness.
Nadeesha Uyangoda was born in Sri Lanka. She is the author of L'unica persona nera nella stanza (66thand2nd, 2021), winner of Premio Sila and Premio Rapallo Special Prize "Anna Maria Ortese", and of Corpi che contano (66thand2nd, 2024). She created the podcast Sulla razza (Juventus/OnePodcast), has written for both national and international outlets, and is currently a columnist for Internazionale magazine.
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Book
Published 2025-09-01 by Einaudi Stile Libero |