Novel 2 of the Elisabetta Trilogy

• Novel
• With bookmark
• 328 pages

978-3-86638-436-1

22.00 €           

»Everything seemed fine« – that's how it ended in Volume 1, »Elisabetta or The Death of the Cricket«. It was supposed to be a quiet, intimate family life, filled with love and happiness. Elisabetta, her husband Sebastiano, a love from her life on the mainland of Calabria, before her departure – or was it an escape? – with him and her now six-year-old son Mino across the sea to Sicily. Finally, she could shake off all her fears, her panic, her torments from her – as she called it – »unlife«.

In her husband’s hometown, where his parents also lived, a small town on the outskirts of Catania, they had founded a small, thriving wine marketing company. There she had acquired extensive knowledge, which she had learned over on the mainland—but then disaster struck: her husband Sebastiano is killed in an accident—his car veered off the straight road for no apparent reason and crashed into a bridge pier.

From one moment to the next, Elisabetta was left to fend for herself, relying solely on the help of her in-laws. She was suddenly a widow and a single mother, consumed with love for her son.

She shook off the shock for Mino’s sake and, thinking of his future, she fought against the darkness of grief and despair and threw herself into her work. Now the wine business had to become a success. To achieve this, she needed to expand the initially local distribution network and find cooperation partners.

In Veneto, too. That’s why she flies to Venice one day. If only she had had the slightest inkling of the shockwaves and waves of fate that would wash her out of the lagoon city on a traumatic odyssey to Naples—she would never have boarded the plane in Catania.

But she had no idea. Not even in Milan, where a stranger kept crossing her path at crucial moments. She knew nothing about her brothers, the last members of her Calabrian family, who suddenly appeared in Milan in a threatening manner. And above all, she knew nothing about the suffering of her little son Mino, who had suddenly disappeared. No, nothing was good anymore…

Sorrento sun peaks (Sorrentiner Sonnenspitzen)

• Hardcover
• With bookmark
• 144 pages
• With many colored pictures
• also available as an eBook
• with the ISBN 978-3-86638-327-2

978-3-86638-326-5

20.00 €           

Twelve times, writer and travel journalist Uwe Krist, an expert on and lover of southern Italy, has traveled to and around Sorrento, gathering his observations and impressions for us—which he comments on humorously and recounts with a passion that has a beautiful old name: wanderlust.

Uwe Krist’s debut novel, »Elisabetta oder Das Sterben der Grille« (Elisabetta or The Death of the Cricket), was also set in southern Italy. The television personality and reporter took a bold leap from media reporter to literary narrator by transporting himself, his young protagonist Elisabetta, and us to his favorite landscape. Before the sequel and thus the second volume of the Elisabetta novel is published, he embarks on an entertaining and eventful journey between narrative and reportage:

The small town on the peninsula of the same name near Naples has attracted me for decades. I never tire of it. I still gather new impressions, learn new things, am curious, avoid lengthy Italian discussions because I am ultimately not up to them verbally… I can never sing along to the second verses of “Santa Lucia” and “Torna a Surriento” either. Yes, I remain a stranger, but one who is happily accepted and gets caught up in the whirlwind around Vesuvius.

We learn how Italians bathe; how to deal appropriately with miracles and patron saints; where lemons really bloom in the countryside, Uwe Krist tells us; what the past might mean in an eternal city; how modern women’s beards are; how doggedly loyalty works in the south… No, no, listing things here achieves nothing:

You have to hear it from Uwe Krist himself!

Novel

• Hardcover
• 360 pages with ribbon

978-3-86638-366-1

22.00 €           

Frightening, brutal and fascinating at the same time is the story of Elisabetta, a girl from the mountainous region of Calabria, the young woman on the run from the world of the still unbroken terror of medieval traditions and brutal laws in her own family.

In other words, the Middle Ages instead of the 21st century: Elisabetta shares this fate of open oppression with many women here in the far south of Italy. It is the unbroken, male-determined dictate of unconditional obedience, without contradiction or enlightenment, far from love and self-realisation. But the »cricket«, as her father called her as a child before he too fell victim to the violence of the South, sees an opportunity to save herself despite merciless disenfranchisement and death threats:

Long after her mother’s violent death, she breaks out of silence, defies the omnipresent rules of the Omertá. She flees to a distant city – but incapable of feeling and love as she was brought up, she threatens to break in half freedom from psychosis and delusions, and on her renewed flight gets into deadly confrontations of self-appointed family overlords and into mafia-like honour deals, has to escape machinations that would force her into a marriage. After a series of murders, she hides behind a borrowed identity.