Niccolò Ammaniti
Ti prendo e ti porto via (I'll Steal You Away)
A novel, Mondadori 1999 - Einaudi Stile Libero 2014, 530 pages

“Steal You Away is also about a boy faced with difficult moral choices that will define his future. It traces the path to Ammaniti’s follow-up, I’m Not Scared, the global bestseller that became a hit film in 2003. In the end, we get two heart-wrenching love stories for the price of one. This young storyteller exercises the confidence, honesty and sensibility of a master without spilling a drop of sweat.”
The Times

“Ammaniti beautifully evokes the lopsided streets of an Italian backwater and, especially in Pietro’s surprising friendship with the prettiest girl in the village, the shadow life of childhood.”
The New Yorker

In a tiny Italian village, a young boy named Pietro is growing up tormented by bullies and ignored by his parents. When an aging playboy, Graziano Biglia, returns to town, a change is in the air: Pietro decides to take on the bullies, his lonely teacher Flora finds romance with the town’s prodigal son, and the inept janitor at the school proclaims his love for his favorite prostitute. But the village isn’t ready for such change, and when Graziano seduces and forgets Flora, both she and Pietro’s tentative hopes seem crushed forever. With great tenderness, Ammaniti shines light on the heart-wrenching failures and quiet redemptions of ordinary people trying to live extraordinary lives. I’ll Steal You Away is a fresh and classic story of a boy learning to be a man that delivers on the promise of Ammaniti’s acclaimed debut.

 

 

Niccolò Ammaniti

Niccolò Ammaniti was born and lives in Rome. He made his debut in fiction in 1995 with the novel Branchie. He is the author of award-winning novels and short stories, translated in 44 countries: Fango (1996), Ti prendo e ti porto via (1999), Io non ho paura (2001, Premio Viareggio), Come Dio comanda (2006, Premio Strega), Che la festa cominci (2009), Io e te (2010), Il momento è delicato (2012), Anna (2015) and La vita intima (The Intimate Life, 2023). In 2014 he edited the anthology Figuracce, which includes the short story Marco Risi contro la Maga della Maglianella.

Many of his books have been successfully made into films: L’ultimo capodanno (directed by Marco Risi, 1998); Branchie (directed by Francesco Ranieri Martinotti, 1999); Io non ho paura and Come Dio comanda (both directed by Gabriele Salvatores, 2003 and 2008), Io e te (directed by Bernardo Bertolucci, 2012). Following his work as author and director of the feature-length doc The Good Life (2014), Ammaniti has made his TV debut with The Miracle, a SKY original series for which he was showrunner, co-writer and co-director that also aired in France, Germany, Spain and UK. In 2019 Ammaniti received the Series Con Award. Ammaniti is also showrunner, co-writer and director of Anna, a Sky original TV series, based on the novel of the same name.

In January 2017, Niccolò Ammaniti has been awarded a honorary degree in Philology, Literature, and History.

 

“Steal You Away is also about a boy faced with difficult moral choices that will define his future. It traces the path to Ammaniti’s follow-up, I’m Not Scared, the global bestseller that became a hit film in 2003. In the end, we get two heart-wrenching love stories for the price of one. This young storyteller exercises the confidence, honesty and sensibility of a master without spilling a drop of sweat.”
The Times

“Skillfully written in dual voices, the book explores the innermost psyche of the characters, who realize that the dreams they had so desperately clung to were not the answers at all.”
Booklist

“Another powerful story about the loss of childhood innocence in small-town Italy from Rome-born author Ammaniti.”
Financial Times

“Ammaniti beautifully evokes the lopsided streets of an Italian backwater and, especially in Pietro’s surprising friendship with the prettiest girl in the village, the shadow life of childhood.”
The New Yorker

“Chilling and intimate, Ammaniti’s work brings life to a deceptively quiet town and its wealth of eclectic and unsettling residents.”
Publishers Weekly

“Again Ammaniti uncovers the tragedy in ordinary people’s lives — the awful gap between dream and reality — and skewers it to the page with such elegance that you cannot tear yourself away from the inexorable trajectory of ruin.”
The Big Issue

“In his portrayal of an ordinary, introspective bullied boy and a middle-aged man experiencing a ludicrous midlife crisis, Niccolò Ammaniti possesses a “Dickensian touch for character study”(New York Times Book Review). Set in a rural Tuscan village passed each hour by the Genoa-Rome trains, the novel also evokes a cinematic sense of place, a town of misfits with extraordinary dreams but quite mundane lives. Filled with humor and tragedy, pathos and pop culture, I’ll Steal You Away is a page-turner until the unpredictable end.”
Bookmarks Italy 

“Ammaniti… has the gift of authority combined with an instinctive understanding of how his characters will behave in every circumstance… Protracted and entertaining, it is also intensely moving at its accelerated conclusion… This is a Brueghel, a canvas… each character’s pathway affecting the poise of the whole spun web, the very weightlessness of which gives the book what Milan Kundera calls the unbearable lightness of being.”
Tom Adair

Foreign rights sold in
Albania: Botimet Dudaj
Australia: Text Publishing
Croatia: AGM
Czech Republic: Havran
France: Grasset
Germany: Fischer
Greece: Kastaniotis
Hungary: Európa Könyvkiadó
Kuwait and Middle East: Dar Kalemat
The Netherlands: Lebowski
Poland: Muza
Russia: Inostranka, Atticus
Serbia: Plato Books
Spain and Latin America (Castilian): Anagrama
Sweden: Norstedts
Turkey: Doğan Kitap
Uk and Us: Canongate

Italian and international editions

Foreign publishers of Niccolò Ammaniti’s works:
Albania: Botimet Dudaj
Armenia: Zangak
Australia: Text Publishing
Brazil: Companhia das Letras, Bertrand Editora Brasil
Bulgaria: Colibri
China: Shangai 99, Crown Publishing, Horizon Media
Croatia: AGM, Profil, Vorto Palabra
Czech Republic: Havran, NLN, Nakladatelstvì Lidové noviny
Denmark: Gyldendal
Egypt: Beba Editions
Estonia: Pegasus
Finland: Otava Publishing
France: Edition du Félin, Grasset, Laffont
Georgia: Sulakauri
Germany: Fischer, Reclam, Piper
Greece: Perugia, Kastaniotis, Metaixmio
Hungary: Ulpius Haz, Noram kiado, Európa Könyvkiadó
Iceland: Bjartur
Israel: Kinneret
Japan: Hayakawa Shobo
Korea: SeamulkiulSigongsa
Kuwait and Middle East: Dar Kalemat
Latvia: Jāņa Rozes apgāds
Lithuania: Tyto Alba, Alma Littera
Macedonia: Kultura, Magor, Antolog Books
Mozambico: Societade Ediotorial Ndjira
The Netherlands: Wereldbibliotheek, Prometheus, Lebowski
Norway: HR Ferdinand, Vigmostad og Bjørke
Poland: Muza
Portugal: Dom Quixote, Bertrand Editora
Portugal (Mozambico): Sociedade editorial Ndjira
Romania: Humanitas
Russia: Machaon, Inostranka, Atticus
Serbia: Plato Books
Slovenia: Goga, Študentska založba
Slovakia: Slovart, Ikar
Spain and Latin America (Castilian): Grijalbo, Anagrama
Spain (Catalan): Empuries, Angle Editorial
Sweden: Norstedts
Thailand: Butterfly Publishing
Turkey: Can Yayinlari, Doğan Kitap
UK: Canongate
US: Canongate US, Black Cat-Grove Atlantic
Vietnam: Phu Nu

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