Portrait of a Family with a Fat Daughter

Author: Margherita Giacobino

Translator: Judith Landry   Cover design: Marie Lane  

Portrait of a Family with a Fat Daughter has been shortlisted for the Italian Prose Award 2019.

Portrait of a Family with a Fat Daughter tells the story of four generations of a peasant family living outside Turin between the late nineteenth century and the boom years of the 1950s, as they clamber out of grinding rural poverty into the sixties world of frozen fish and fridges. The author's grandmother emigrates to California and returns to Italy semi-paralysed after a mishap as she is giving birth.

When her father dies the author's eight-year-old mother returns to Italy, to be brought up by a family she does not know, to become Italian again and ultimately to marry a captivating 'man-boy' whose fecklessness is grippingly described, as is his time in a German prison camp in World War 11. She runs a small shop which gradually expands, lifting the family out of the working class; her daughter, Margherita, always a conscientious student, reared by this extended matriarchal family, becomes the writer of this book.

'It has been a long while in Italian fiction since such an authentic and engaging voice has appeared.' Bruno Quaranta in La Stampa

'An epic novel, which is the story of an Italy which no longer exists, becomes the portrait of a family. It is a novel which touches the heart.' Valeria Parrella in Grazie