Home | 2005| 2006| 2007 | 2008| News

The Incomplete Husband by Ben Faccini

Fiction.
Published June 2007.
Hardback (210 x 148mm).
£15.99.
352 pp.
ISBN: 978 1 84627 081 2

Buy from Amazon

Moving between the isolated Italian mountains, the plains of sun-drenched Camargue and the vibrant jumble of Paris, The Incomplete Husband is a richly involving story about migration and refuge from one of our most observant and talented young story-tellers.

Growing up in a remote corner of rural Italy, Elena has a sheltered life, unaware of the power of her beauty and unable to imagine a world beyond her hilltop village, until Riccardo arrives and the limits of her horizon are cracked wide open. As they fall in love, she allows herself to share his dream of a future elsewhere and defies her family to follow it. But then her hopes are suddenly smashed and Elena is cast adrift, clutching onto her son Marco and her brother-in-law Giacomo, and turning them into guardians of her unfulfilled past. It is only when Marco rejects this fate and flees for Paris, with its migrant population, its political protests and its romantic possibilities, that all three of them begin to realise how tightly they have been shackled by their family history and how much they must risk to set themselves free.