The Burning Origin – Daniele Mencarelli

A searing story about homecoming, set in RomeGabriele Bilancini hasn’t been home for four years. Home is the Tuscolano neighbourhood in Rome, where he was born and grew up with his parents, sister, and a tight-knit group of friends. Today, he lives in Milan and he’s a world-famous designer. The perfect example of “making it”. Back home, nothing has changed. His friends'' lives above all: everything is the same, as if no time at all had passed. Ashamed of his origins, but unsatisfied with his present, however successful, Gabriele finds himself enveloped into the sweet, suffocating embrace of the past. An embrace that will force him to confront the deep fracture within himself. Mencarelli distills these elements with stunning clarity in a fast-paced novel. He offers us a passionate portrait of a Roman suburban neighbourhood that could be any suburb, real or imagined, where the protagonist nurtures a desire to express himself that is never satisfied, and a need to belong that can never be fulfilled.