You, Bleeding Childhood (Tu, sanguinosa infanzia)

Winner of the English PEN Award, 2023Italy’s great chronicler of the macabre & of growing up geekyOriginally published as Tu, sanguinosa infanzia°°° Long before the latest vogue for autofiction, Michele Mari, one of Italy's most beloved authors, cast his mind back to the days of his own childhood, & found it crawling with monsters.Raised on comic books & science fiction, the young Mari constructed an alternate universe for himself untouched by uncomprehending grownups or sadistic peers. Compared to the horrors of real life, Long John Silver & Cthulhu made for positively cuddly company; but little boys raised by beasts may well grow up beastly – or never grow up at all. Waking or sleeping, the obsessions of Mari's youth seem to colour his every adult thought. You, Bleeding Childhood stands as his first attempt to catalogue this cabinet of wonders. Cult classics since their first publication, these loosely connected stories stand as the ideal introduction to an encyclopedic fantasist on a par with Kafka, Poe, & Borges.°°° ‘Mari makes his English-language debut with a dazzling and sometimes surreal collection of reminiscences on childhood obsessions. [...] Mari delivers trenchant satires of nostalgia with deadpan grace & wit, resulting in stories that are as heartfelt as they are humorous, with great care given to descriptions of the characters’ foibles & idiosyncrasies. This is not to be missed.’ — Publishers Weekly °°° Michele Mari is one of Italy’s most renowned contemporary writers. He has published ten novels, in addition to several short story & poetry collections, & has received prestigious awards including the the Bagutta Prize, the Mondello Prize & the Selezione Campiello Prize. Brian Robert Moore has translated A Silence Shared by Lalla Romano, Meeting in Positano by Goliarda Sapienza, & the work of other distinguished Italian authors. Long before the latest vogue for autofiction, Michele Mari, one of Italy's most beloved authors, cast his mind back to the days of his own childhood, and found it crawling with monsters. Raised on comic books and science fiction, the young Mari constructed an alternate universe for himself untouched by uncomprehending grownups or sadistic peers. Compared to the horrors of real life, Long John Silver and Cthulhu made for positively cuddly company; but little boys raised by beasts may well grow up beastly – or never grow up at all. Waking or sleeping, the obsessions of Mari's youth seem to colour his every adult thought. You, Bleeding Childhood stands as his first attempt to catalogue this cabinet of wonders. Cult classics since their first publication, these loosely connected stories stand as the ideal introduction to an encyclopedic fantasist on a par with Kafka, Poe, and Borges.