Waiting for the World to Call

Original title: Sperando che il mondo mi chiami

Publication Date:

January 2019

Pages:

400

Original language and publisher

Italian | Longanesi

Genre

Debut Novel

Waiting for the World to Call

Original title: Sperando che il mondo mi chiami

  • 2 Seas Represents Dutch rights

DEBUT NOVEL | FICTION

A fresh, compelling voice in Italian fiction. 

A new unforgettable main character.

Waiting for the world to call is a deeply poetic and moving novel about facing the many unexpected challenges life lays before us.

Maria Francesca Venturo’s irresistible and genuine narrative unveils the hopes, dreams and frustrations of those who choose to devote themselves to the most beautiful job in the world.

Carolina Altieri gets up every morning at dawn and she goes to work. She leaves home dressed up flawlessly, gets on the bus and turns her cell phone on, hoping to receive a call from any school. Hers is the most beautiful profession in the world, but she is still a substitute teacher with no clear-cut future, and no end to this in sight. Living day by day, she cannot coniugate the verbs to the future, either for herself or for her children. Through hours that flow in a endless present, interrupted only by visits to a tender grandmother and by the overwhelming and imperfect love to Erasmus, Carolina narrates the daring world of the school, populated by hopeful commuters and lazy secretaries, as well as her passion for those children whose eager smiles, unexpected truths and sudden hugs never cease to surprise and enrich her. It will be this passion that forces Carolina to make a change to her eternally suspended life and change her destiny.

“My heart is heavy but I’m ready, with the lipstick on the lips and the knee-length skirt. Ready to not know where to go. Uncertainty requires some preparation “.

Maria Francesca Venturo has worked as actress, animator, bartender, concierge, shop assistant and pastry. She is a primary school teacher and she is now teaching in a Montessori school. Waiting for the world to call is her first novel.