US (Grove Atlantic, paperback edition) Not All Bastards Are from Vienna
Andrea Molesini
Non tutti i bastardi sono di Vienna (Not All Bastards Are from Vienna)
A novel, Sellerio 2010, 376 pages

Foreign rights: Sellerio, Marcella Marini: marini.editor@sellerio.it

Premio Campiello 2011
Premio Comisso 2011
Premio Città di Cuneo Primo Romanzo 2011
Premio Latisana 2011

Winner of the prestigious Campiello Prize, this international bestseller tells the riveting story of an Italian family whose courage is put to the test when their villa is requisitioned by enemy troops during the First World War.

“Mr. Molesini has the true novelist’s ability to bring scenes and individuals immediately before our eyes, so vividly that they take possession of our imagination.”
The Wall Street Journal (read all)

“Not All Bastards Are From Vienna is wonderfully alive — often terribly so — as a wartime adventure and story of youth arriving at manhood.”
The New York Times (read all)

Andrea Molesini’s exquisite debut novel – winner of the prestigious Campiello Prize – portrays the depths of heroism and horror within a Northern Italian village toward the end of the Great War. In the autumn of 1917, Refrontolo – a small community north of Venice – is occupied by Austrian soldiers as the Italian army is pushed to the Piave river. The Spada family owns the largest estate in the area, where orphaned seventeen-year-old Paolo lives with his eccentric grandparents, headstrong aunt, and a loyal staff. With the battlefront nearby, the Spada home become a bastion of resistance, both clashing and cooperating with the military men imposing on their household. As his family succumbs to acts of jealousy and betrayal, love and hate, Paolo is recruited to help with a compromising covert operation and his life is put in irrevocable jeopardy.
Internationally celebrated and garlanded with awards, Not All Bastards Are from Vienna is an unforgettable portrait of the erosion of tradition and the fall of an Italian aristocratic family, whose personal battles burn with more fire than those of the war happening around them.

Andrea Molesini

Andrea Molesini - © Claudio Nostri

Andrea Molesini was born and lives in Venice. He teaches Comparative Literature at Padua University. He is a poet, a translator, an author of children’s stories translated into many languages, and a sailor. He won the Premio Andersen Career Award in 1999, the Premio Monselice for literary translation in 2008 and in 2011 the Premio Campiello for Non tutti i bastardi sono di Vienna (2010). He is the author of children’s books, essays and successful novels: La primavera del lupo (2013), Presagio (2014), La solitudine dell’assassino (2016), Dove un’ombra sconsolata mi cerca (2019), Il rogo della Repubblica (2021).

 

 

 

“Mr. Molesini has the true novelist’s ability to bring scenes and individuals immediately before our eyes, so vividly that they take possession of our imagination.”
The Wall Street Journal (read all)

“War and Peace meets The Leopard in a novel set among Italian aristocrats during the Great War… Rich and moving… Molesini has the true novelist’s ability to bring scenes and individuals immediately before our eyes, so vividly that they take possession of our imagination… This is a very fine novel indeed, a historical novel that speaks to the present as powerfully and clearly as it does of the past.”
The Wall Street Journal (read all)

“Not All Bastards Are From Vienna is wonderfully alive — often terribly so — as a wartime adventure and story of youth arriving at manhood.”
The New York Times (read all)

“An excellent war novel, as well as a powerful depiction of a family’s strength and mankind’s justification for war’s barbarity, movingly told and full of vivid imagery.”
Publishers Weekly (read all)

“[An] impressively controlled, gently paced, ultimately piercing debut… this unusual novel, reflecting the war in microcosm, captures a turning point in the fates of empires.”
Kirkus Reviews (read all)

“Riveting and heartwarming, Molesini balances a nuanced look at the nature of war with the minor triumphs and defeats that mark growing up and falling in love. Molesini’s moving and lyrical writing proves that Not All Bastards are From Vienna belongs in the canon of great war fiction.”
Paste Magazine

“Take Hemingway’s masterpiece A Farewell to Arms and Erich Maria Remarque’s classic All Quiet on the Western Front, and cross these two war depictions with the portrait of Italian aristocracy in Tomasi di Lampedusa’s novel The Leopard… [Not All Bastards Are from Vienna] is a powerful and effective blend of Bildungs­roman, armchair travel, historical document, and war drama, with touches of a thriller.”
Kultur

“A mesmerizing portrait of love, betrayal and an aristocratic family’s downfall… Molesini’s debut novel roars into life from the get-go… A riveting tale of courage and resistance… Gripping, harrowing and touching, Molesini’s novel illustrates the importance of family bonds and national pride while also revealing that divided loyalty comes at a price.”
Minneapolis Star Tribune (read all)

“A thunderbolt of a debut novel… a vast fresco, both family chronicle and story of the Great War… evoked with finesse and erudition.”
L’Express

“With formidable talent, Molesini gradually reveals a universe of love and hate, patriotism and everyday heroism.”
Le Monde

“Molesini gives all his grace to the story… [with] great expressive power.”
El Pais

“A novel of boundless beauty and tenderness, but also the overwhelming sadness and drama of war in Europe during the first half of the twentieth century. A story, too, about almost unsung heroes, those who forged the dream of a continent.”
ABC

“A great novel, one to read and reread for its abundance of broad and deep reflections.”
Kult Underground

“Molesini’s words are vital and transcend the rhetoric of memory… Behind this skillful work lies a collective vision, one that speaks for individuals no longer with us.”
la Repubblica

“Wonderful.”
La Stampa

Foreign rights: Sellerio, Marcella Marini: marini.editor@sellerio.it

Foreign rights sold in
Denmark: Gyldendal
France: Calmann-Lévy, Le Livre de Poche
Germany: Piper
Hungary: Scolar
The Netherlands: Wereldbibliotheek
Norway: Pax Forlag
Slovenia: Mladinska
Spain: Lumen
UK: Atlantic Books
US: Grove Atlantic

Foreign publishers of Andrea Molesini’s works
Denmark: Gyldendal
France: Calmann-Lévy, Le Livre de Poche
Germany: Piper
Hungary: Scolar
The Netherlands: Wereldbibliotheek
Norway: Pax Forlag
Slovenia: Mladinska
Spain: Lumen
UK: Atlantic Books
US: Grove Atlantic

· · · · · ·