The entwined stories of two estranged brothers, a forbidden love, and a fate shattered by fascism make for an unputdownable, sweeping debut novel.

Venice, 1938. A dockworker by day and a dancer in an underground cabaret by night, Angelo secretly has a love affair with Luca, an enigmatic policeman, under the growing shadow of fascism.

When Angelo discovers that his brother, Marino, has joined the Blackshirts, Mussolini’s Voluntary Militia, his life is thrown into turmoil. Forced into exile, Angelo flees to America, where he becomes a filmmaker.

Thirty years later, his film, inspired by his youth, is selected for the Venice Film Festival. Back in the city of his childhood for the first time, Angelo wanders once more through its labyrinthine alleys and suppressed memories.

The revelation of a long-buried secret threatens to destroy the fragile peace he has built…

In the twilight atmosphere of a Venice torn apart by fascism, Thierry Brunello delivers a passionate novel driven by a forbidden love story, in which intimacy and history, beauty and violence, and art and resistance are inextricably entwined.