Nadja

Montelorenzo, southern Tuscany. Alessandro, the owner of a successful campsite, is from a local, formerly wealthy, landowning family, one of whose family members held a senior post in the Fascist regime. He believes that Montelorenzo deserves to have its own library, and, for political reasons, nominates Franco to become its first librarian.

Franco comes from a long established, artisan family. Although university educated, he decides to follow in his father's footsteps as a cabinet maker. He is a popular and eligible, Moto Guzzi driving bachelor, whose family has a long history of left-wing activism.

While on a lunchtime break in a bar not far from his workshop, Franco meets Nadja; a spirited and determined but anxious person. Her mother died giving birth to her and she was brought up by her father, a communist, who named his daughter Nadja after the wives of both Lenin and Stalin. Nadja, short for Nadezhda, means 'Hope' in Russian. Nadja figuratively - and literally - becomes Franco's hope.

As befits a Greek tragedy, the reader is confronted by the universal question: can humans exercise free will to challenge their fated destiny?