Date: 2005

Author: Alessandro Baricco, translated from the Italian by Ann Goldstein

Barricco’s novellas are ruminative parables inhabited by sketches of people determined to make peace with their charcoaled memories. In Civil War Spain, a man named Manuel Roca hides his young daughter Nina in a cellar moments before he’s gunned down by three assassins. Nina is seen but spared. Years later, she tracks down Tito, the man who couldn’t shoot her. Barricco orchestrates a variation on the Stockholm Syndrome in which empathy complicates intended revenge. A lean and stylish morality tale.