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Devotion

On sale

15th April 2021

Price: £8.99

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Selected: ebook / ISBN-13: 9781474613378

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NOW A NETFLIX LIMITED SERIES, COMING VALENTINE’S DAY 2022

‘An absolute scorcher’
Evening Standard

‘The book about infidelity that has shaken up Italy’
The Times

‘Intimate and ultimately moving… completely absorbing’
Daily Mail

‘A gripping novel exploring the tensions in an apparently idyllic marriage’
Financial Times

‘A must-read’
Sydney Morning Herald

Devotion thrilled me, made me think and moved me deeply… Irresistible’
Jonathan Safran Foer

Carlo, a part-time professor of creative writing, and Margherita, an architect-turned-real estate-agent: a happily married couple in their mid-thirties, perfectly attuned to each other’s restlessness. They are in love, but they also harbour desires that stray beyond the confines of their bedroom: Carlo longs for the quiet beauty of one of his students, Sofia; Margherita fantasises about the strong hands of her physiotherapist, Andrea.

But it is love, with its unassuming power, which ultimately pulls them from the brink, aided by Margherita’s mother Anna, the couple’s anchor and lighthouse – a wise, proud seamstress hiding her own disappointments.

But after eight years of repressed desires and the birth of a son, when the past resurfaces in the form of books sent anonymously, will love be enough to save them?

A no. 1 international bestseller
Winner of the Premio Strega Giovani
Shortlisted for the Premio Strega

‘Powerful, delicate, exquisite’
Claudio Magris

‘Masterful… The ending is just as good as that of Joyce’s The Dead
Corriere della Sera

‘You’ll feel like taking refuge in this book and never leaving its confines’
La Stampa

‘With all-encompassing writing, Marco Missiroli opens the rooms of his characters and the streets of Milan, the thoughts and the concealed desires, makes dialogue and silences reverberate with the spontaneity of great narrators’
Il Foglio

What's Inside

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Reviews

Financial Times
A gripping novel exploring the tensions in an apparently idyllic marriage, where a couple in their thirties is tested by their attraction to others, and by their own accumulation of desires and disappointments.
Claudio Magris
Powerful, delicate, exquisite.
Roberto Saviano
Missiroli cuts right through to the darkness of our inner lives.
Daily Mail
Missiroli's erotically charged novel is currently being made into a Netflix series, but this intimate and ultimately moving analysis of desire and the long-term legacy of betrayal deserves to be read - moving seamlessly between perspectives, we're brought up close to the lives of its sympathetically imagined characters in a way that's completely absorbing.
Emmanuel Carrère
A writer of pure excellence.
Evening Standard
An absolute scorcher... Clever structured with characters criss-crossing through one another's lives and the streets of Milan, with the second half of the book taking place nine years later, Fidelity teems with pain and pleasure, blood, sweat, and semen... Its descriptions of gory fight scenes between both dogs and men pulse with a kind of brutal machismo I'm not sure you'd find in an English novel today... Read Fidelity before the end of the year. Books are almost always better than their TV adaptations.
Jonathan Safran Foer
Fidelity thrilled me (I read it in one sitting), made me think, and moved me deeply. It manages to be as deep as any literature, and as irresistible as any gossip. It is a brilliant work by a brilliant writer.
Il Foglio
With all-encompassing writing, Marco Missiroli opens the rooms of his characters and the streets of Milan, the thoughts and the concealed desires, makes dialogue and silences reverberate with the spontaneity of great narrators.
La Stampa
You'll feel like taking refuge in the pages of this book and never leaving its confines.
The Times
The book about infidelity that has shaken up Italy.
Sydney Morning Herald
A must-read... Marco Missiroli, with intelligence and empathy, considers how and why such people might find themselves wandering beyond the boundaries of promises they have made... This subtle novel has been lauded as a revealing study in marital infidelity, but it also moves beyond the theme of fidelity in traditional marriage to explore different kinds of sexual fidelity. And it touches on more abstract notions of loyalty and betrayal, including the idea of faithfulness to a family, an idea, a place, or a sense of one's true self.
Corriere della Sera
Masterful: Missiroli's words are fire... The ending - chilling - is just as good as that of Joyce's The Dead.