A funny and profound work of fiction about being a stranger in your own family and life.
Every family has its own mythology, but in this family none of the myths match up. Claudia's mother says she met her husband when she stopped him from jumping off a bridge. Her father says it happened when he saved her from an attempted robbery. Both parents are deaf but couldn't be more different; they can't even agree on how they met, much less who needed saving.
Into this unlikely union, our narrator is born. She comes of age with her brother in this strange, and increasingly estranged, household split between a village in southern Italy and New York City. Without even sign language in common, family communication is chaotic and rife with misinterpretations, by turns hilarious and devastating.
An outsider in every way, Claudia longs for a freedom she's not even sure exists. Only books and punk rock—and a tumultuous relationship—begin to show her the way to create her own mythology, to construct her version of the story of her life.
Kinetic, formally dazzling and spectacularly original, Strangers I Know is a portrait of an unconventional family that makes us look anew at how language shapes our understanding of ourselves.
Claudia Durastanti is the author of four critically acclaimed novels. Strangers I Know (La straniera) has been translated into 18 languages and was shortlisted in 2019 for the Premio Strega, Italy's most prestigious literary prize. A former Italian Fellow in Literature at the American Academy of Rome, Durastanti is also one of the founders of the Italian Literature Festival in London. She writes for several literary supplements and sits on the board of the Turin Book Fair. She is the Italian translator of Joshua Cohen, Donna Haraway, Ocean Vuong and the most recent edition of The Great Gatsby.
'Formally innovative and emotionally complex, this novel explores themes of communication, family and belonging with exceptional insight. Durastanti, celebrated in Italy for her intelligent voice and her hybrid perspective, speaks to all who are outside and in between. Strangers I Know, in a bracing translation by Elizabeth Harris, is a stunning English-language debut.' Jhumpa Lahiri
'Claudia Durastanti's writing is lyrical and sharp, underpinned with a searching gaze that turns the everyday into something darkly beautiful. Every page feels totally, absorbingly, alive.' Sophie Mackintosh
