The Hummingbird: A Florentine

A NEW YORKER BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR

“The Hummingbird is a remarkable accomplishment, a true gift to the world.” —Michael Cunningham

“Long considered one of Italy's leading writers, Sandro Veronesi has re-written the family saga. Ardent, gripping, and inventive to the core, it has already been hailed a classic.”—Jhumpa Lahiri

"The Hummingbird is a masterly novel, a brilliantly conceived mosaic of love and tragedy."—Ian McEwan

The #1 international sensation from a master of European literature—winner of Italy’s Premio Strega—a saga of a Florentine family from the 1960s to the present that brilliantly captures the power of history and the multi-faceted experience of life itself as it explores how we contend with uncontrollable forces that both buffet and buoy us. 

Marco Carrera is “the hummingbird,” a man with an almost supernatural ability to remain still amid the chaos of an ever-changing world. Though his life is rife with emotional challenges—suffering the death of his sister and the absence of his brother; caring for his elderly parents; raising his granddaughter when her mother, Marco's own child, is no longer capable; loving an enigmatic woman—Marco carries on with a noble stoicism that belies an intensity for living. As the years pass and the arc of his life bends, Marco finds himself filled with joy for the future as the baton passes from him to the next generation. 

A beautiful and compelling journey through time told in myriad narrative styles, The Hummingbird is a story of suffering, happiness, loss, love, and hope—of a man who embodies the quiet heroism that defines daily life for countless ordinary folk. A thrilling novel about the need to look to the future with hope and live with intensity to the very end, Sandro Veronesi’s masterpiece—eminently readable, rich in insight, and filled with interesting twists and revelations—is a portrait of human existence, the vicissitudes and vagaries that propel and ultimately define us

Translated from the Italian by Elena Pala

"A great novel, vibrating with life and death, happiness and pain, nostalgia and hope for the future." —Vanity Fair

"Everything that makes the novel worthwhile and engaging is here ... magnificent – moving, replete, beautiful." —The Guardian

Sandro Veronesi is one of Italy’s most acclaimed writers of literary fiction, as well as a poet, essayist, journalist, and playwright. He is the author of nine novels, including Quiet Chaos, which was translated into twenty languages and won the Premio Strega, the Prix Fémina, and the Prix Méditerranée. Veronesi is only the second author in the Premio Strega's history to win the prize twice.

Elena Pala eventually found her calling in literary translation after completing a PhD in linguistics at Cambridge University and a stint at a busy creative agency in London. Recent translations include The Hummingbird by Sandro Veronesi and Diary of a Tuscan Bookshop by Alba Donati.