A man's inner demons threaten his chance at love with a childhood friend in this poignant, propulsive novel set against the beauty of modern Italy.
Dark is the morning that passes
without the light of your eyes
-Cesare Pavese
As a 9-year-old schoolgirl, Franca tells Gino that she will marry him one day, and against all the odds her prophecy comes true. Set in a mountain village in Abruzzo in the early 2000s, Dark Is the Morning is the story of two ordinary young people who fall in love and seem destined for a life of happiness. But there is something in Franca's past that haunts Gino. His curiosity gradually turns into obsession-an obsession that will have heartbreaking consequences.
Dark Is the Morning has a timeless, eternal quality, like a fable or a fairy-tale. In a world where women's strength often holds communities together, it speaks to male fragility and to the insidious and corrosive power of jealousy. Shifting between tenderness and paranoia, between beauty and tragedy, this is an extraordinary novel from one of the UK's most unpredictable and celebrated writers. Praise for Dartmouth Park:
"A masterfully ambiguous depiction of how the sincere convert is often at risk of becoming a dangerous zealot…Dartmouth Park provides a powerfully evocative catalyst for thought and feeling." -New York Times Book Review
"I devoured Dartmouth Park in a single sitting. The sense of dislocation-and location-made it seem like a dream of another life, all of it so lyrical and yet narratively acute. A wonderful achievement." -Jonathan Lethem, award-winning author of The Feral Detective and Motherless Brooklyn Rupert Thomson is the author of more than a dozen critically acclaimed novels, including Barcelona Dreaming, which was shortlisted for the Edward Stanford Fiction with a Sense of Place Award, Never Anyone but You, which was shortlisted for the American Library in Paris Book Award, Death of a Murderer, which was shortlisted for the Costa Novel of the Year Award, and The Insult, which was shortlisted for the Guardian Fiction Prize and selected by David Bowie as one of his 100 Must Read Books of All Time. His memoir, This Party's Got to Stop, won the Writers' Guild Non-Fiction Book of the Year. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and lives in London.
