Tony Ardizzone

“Tony Ardizzone is the kind of novelist who, like, say, Margaret Atwood, E. L. Doctorow, John Edgar Wideman, or, for that matter, Italo Calvino, is essentially unable to write a bad book. The reason is simple enough. He is a masterful storyteller.”

— The Brooklyn Rail

in bruno’s Shadow

As a tsunami in South-East Asia kills three hundred thousand and Pope John Paul II lies dying, the lives of eight people in Rome are transformed by a Croatian housekeeper named Dubravka, who was betrayed in love and later witness to a miracle at the site of apparitions of the Virgin Mary. The stories of the North Americans and Italians she encounters interconnect and alternate with key episodes from Dubravka’s life as she struggles to resolve her personal concerns as well as the contradictions in her Catholic faith while working at a pensione on Rome’s Campo de’ Fiori, in the shadow of the statue of the martyred visionary Giordano Bruno.

In Bruno’s Shadow is a book about exiles and pilgrims: about people from populations that have been displaced by global events beyond their control, as well as those who have the means to travel in search of some small measure of meaning. It is also a book about idealism, about hope, about beliefs that go beyond the stern measure of science, and about positive thought — or what some might call prayer.

GUERNICA WORLD EDITIONS

Other Books BY Tony Ardizzone

“Ardizzone is a writer who writes out of love rather than anger or contempt, and his emotional palette is fittingly broad. Yet his great affection for his subjects never blinds him to the tough realities and inequalities of life; rather, it leads him to gaze more intently and to see deeper.” — Stuart Dybek