Translate This! review by Megan Farr. Read an interview with Fabio Geda here.

Title: Storia di un figlio: Andata e ritorno (Story of a Son: There and Back)

Author: Fabio Geda and Enaiatollah Akbari

Publisher: Baldini+Castoldi, Milan, 2020

Target age: 12+

Original Language: Italian

World English Rights available: Yes (rights already sold for French, Spanish and German). Contact luisa.rovetta@grandieassociati.it from Grandi & Associati

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Storia di un figlio: Andata e ritorno/Story of a Son: There and Back continues the real life story of Hazara migrant Enaiatollah Akbari, begun in the international bestselling novel for children and adults, Nel mare ci sono i coccodrilli/In the Sea there are Crocodiles (translated into English by Howard Curtis), which charts his journey as a child from Afghanistan to Italy, and has been translated into over 28 languages. 

Now an adult, Enaiat recounts his experiences of living in Italy, where he studies and works. He sends a friend to Afghanistan to find his family, which is successful, and he is reunited with his mother by phone, and has a long distance relationship with his mother, sister and brother. Due to the success of In the Sea there are Crocodiles, he is able to send money home to his family. Before he is able to meet his mother, she dies in a tragic accident. Afterwards, he visits his sister in Pakistan where she is expecting her fifth child. Here he meets his future wife, Fazila, before returning to Italy with her.  

Storia di un figlio is a story of pain and forgiveness, of sacrifice and loss. The real experiences of being a migrant, living in a European country, while the rest of the family live in the shadow of the Taliban and the fallout from the ‘war on terror’.

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Fabio Geda was born in 1972 in Turin, where he still lives. He writes for several Italian magazines and newspapers and teaches creative writing at Scuola Holden, the Italian school of storytelling in Turin. He is the author of a number of novels for adults and young people including Per il resto del viaggio ho sparato agli indiani (2007 and 2009), L’esatta sequenza dei gesti (2008), Nel mare ci sono i coccodrilli (2010, translated in 32 countries), Anime scalze (2017 and 2019), Una domenica (2019) and a series of books for children, Berlin (2015-18).