Eva Sleeps

By Francesca Melandri

A bestselling novel in Italy and Elle magazine's book of the year, Eva Sleeps is a sweeping modern story about family, forgiveness, and conflict. At its heart is the story of a woman searching for the truth about her origins. This literary page-turner will delight fans of Elena Ferrante. 

Out of the struggles and conflicts in the border regions of Northern Italy and Austria and the rich history that has resulted from this meeting of cultures, comes a family story that embodies the history of nations. Eva, a forty-year-old public relations professional living in Northern Italy, receives an unexpected message from Southern Italy. Vito, a man she briefly knew as a child as a friend of her mother's, is very ill and would like to see her one last time. He is a retired police officer who was stationed in the north during the late-sixties, a period rife with tension, protest, and violence. These troubles, however, did not stop a young hapless policeman from falling in love with the "wrong" woman, a girl named Gerda from Austrian Tyrol, an inventive and accomplished cook, a single mother with a rich family history of her own, a northerner, the sister of a terrorist, and Gerda's mother.

Vito's affair with Gerda was a passionate one, but what was the nature of their love? And if he loved her so passionately why did he return to Calabria? What scars did those years leave on Vito, and on Gerda? It's time for Eva to find out.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Europa Editions
• Release date: Jul 26, 2016
• ISBN: 9781609453237

Francesca Melandri

Francesca Melandri is a screenwriter and novelist. Eva Sleeps is her English language debut. She lives in Rome, Italy.

Reviews for Eva Sleeps

[bostonbibliophile · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A bittersweet story of love, romantic and familial, that will charm readers of [Corelli's Mandolin] and other WW2 love stories. It's set in South Tyrol, about an ethnic German woman who has a child out of wedlock, and what happens to that child as she grows up. It's a heartstring-puller for sure.

[kakadoo202 · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

Writing seems too conveluted to me. Language does not flow. Wish it would have been done by a different translater.

[flydodofly · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Mir gefällt es wie die Autorin es schafft so viel über die Geschichte des Südtirols in die Geschickte einzuflechten, ohne parteiisch zu werden, und wie sie es schafft zu zeigen, dass manche verhärtete Meinungen mit der Zeit geglättet und vergessen werden können. Die Zeiten ändern sich, und das ist auch gut so. Das Schicksal das einzelnen bekommt in der Verflechtung der Geschichte eine abgemilderte Bedeutung, das Leiden bleicht aus, die Liebe auch, und nur manchmal kommen die Sachen hoch und erinnern an was hätte sein können und was wirklich gewesen ist. Das Leben, einmalig und unveränderbar läuft währenddessen unbeirrt weiter, mildert dabei sogar die schlimmsten Gedanken und Handlungen, wie ein warmer Umschlag.

[lunarreader · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A very nice novel. Apart from some 70 pages (230 -300) where nothing much significant happens, this book gives you a very good impression of a forgotten part in the European history in the small region of Alto Adige / Südtirol, the border between Italy and Austria. I was there for a short while last summer and it's beautiful, quiet and hard to believe that there was a fight, less then 50 years ago, for basic rights such as to speak your mother tongue. Besides this historical aspect it's a novel about love, about being a mother alone, about being the small girl of that mother, about rural harshness but also about the simple life in small communities... Through all these little aspects the book is a very rich story that unfolds slowly through two different timelines.And then we must not forget the most important story: the search for a long lost love, the lover of the mother, but more important, the never-had father figure, the hero, the ideal image of the little girl on how her life could have, no, should have been. The little girl, in the second timeline herself an adult but still looking for true love, true companionship, her true identity? Question marks all over as she longs for this father that is not, for her roots which stay so important or does she tries to forget about them?Tragic and beautiful, this aspect of the book should have been much more elaborated for me.Short: beautiful but could still have been better ....