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A dark, gripping coming-of-age tale that explores violence, friendship, family, and what it means to be a man.
Summer, Palermo, early 1980s. The air hangs hot and heavy. The Mafia-ruled city is a powder keg ready to ignite. In a boxing gym, a fatherless nine-year-old boy climbs into the ring to face his first opponent. So begins On Earth as It Is in Heaven, a sweeping multigenerational saga that reaches back to the collapse of the Italian front in North Africa and forward to young David's quest to become Italy's national boxing champion, a feat that has eluded the other men of his family.
But, Davide Enia, whose layered, lyrical, nonchronological novel caused a sensation when it was published in Italy in 2012, has crafted an epic that soars in miniature as well. The brutal struggles for dominance among David's all male circle of friends; his strict but devoted grandmother, whose literacy is a badge of honor; his charismatic and manipulative great-uncle, who will become his trainer-the vicious scenes and sometimes unsympathetic characters Enia sketches land hard and true.
On Earth as It Is in Heaven is both firmly grounded in what Leonardo Sciascia liked to call "Sicilitude" - the language and mentality of that eternally perplexing island - and devastatingly universal. A meditation on physical violence, love and sex, friendship and betrayal, boxing and ambition, Enia's novel is also a coming-of-age tale that speaks - sometimes crudely, but always honestly - about the joys and terrors of becoming a man.
Summer, Palermo, early 1980s. The air hangs hot and heavy. The Mafia-ruled city is a powder keg ready to ignite. In a boxing gym, a fatherless nine-year-old boy climbs into the ring to face his first opponent. So begins On Earth as It Is in Heaven, a sweeping multigenerational saga that reaches back to the collapse of the Italian front in North Africa and forward to young David's quest to become Italy's national boxing champion, a feat that has eluded the other men of his family.
But, Davide Enia, whose layered, lyrical, nonchronological novel caused a sensation when it was published in Italy in 2012, has crafted an epic that soars in miniature as well. The brutal struggles for dominance among David's all male circle of friends; his strict but devoted grandmother, whose literacy is a badge of honor; his charismatic and manipulative great-uncle, who will become his trainer-the vicious scenes and sometimes unsympathetic characters Enia sketches land hard and true.
On Earth as It Is in Heaven is both firmly grounded in what Leonardo Sciascia liked to call "Sicilitude" - the language and mentality of that eternally perplexing island - and devastatingly universal. A meditation on physical violence, love and sex, friendship and betrayal, boxing and ambition, Enia's novel is also a coming-of-age tale that speaks - sometimes crudely, but always honestly - about the joys and terrors of becoming a man.
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Reviews
"Interspersed throughout are rich stories of family history: his father's childhood and boxing career, his grandfather surviving a North African P.O.W. camp and life lessons from the grandmother Davidù adores and reveres . . . Enia, a playwright, is as adept at capturing the chaotic vibe of his native city ('Arteries that turn into piazzas, alleys that dovetail at diagonal angles') as he is at depicting the quick, furious violence of the boxing ring and the casual brutalities of boyhood."
Carmela Ciuraru, The New York Times Book Review