Black Heart

Evil condemns. Evil defies. Evil unites. But only those who know it can rediscover goodness.

Emilia is thirty-one and her arrival in the remote Alpine village of Sassaia causes a stir. Besides her bags, she carries with her a burdensome secret that she wants to hide in the mountains from everyone who has ever known her.

However, Emilia is not the only one in Sassaia hiding something. Bruno, a teacher, lives in seclusion more out of resignation than by choice. He too knows the weight of guilt—but from the opposite side. Emilia bears the guilt of the perpetrator, Bruno the grief of the victim. Both are united by loneliness, silence, and an inner darkness. Perhaps that is why they are able to find their way to each other and provide one another with what they have long denied themselves—understanding and acceptance.

Silvia Avallone portrays her characters with deep tenderness and compassion. In her novel, she takes us behind the walls of a juvenile prison and into the depths of the inner landscapes of those whom fate has broken before they had a chance to grow up. A Black Heart is a novel about guilt and justice, about judgement and the possibility of redemption. And above all, about the humanity that remains even where we have stopped looking for it.

Admirable stylistic refinement, an extraordinary ability to portray complex and layered human characters that will be permanently etched in literary memory, and a bold grasp of a theme with universal reach—namely, crime and punishment.
— The Viareggio Repaci Prize jury

Silvia Avallone is a magician. She shows you a forest, a house, a girl, then a man. And she asks you to give her your hand and follow her. If you do, she won't let you go until the very end. That is the magic of writing.
— Niccolò Ammaniti, writer