Without Blood

From the author of the acclaimed international best-sellerSilk,here is an unforgettable tale of the cruelty of war, a little girl's shattered world, and her lifelong quest for revenge and healing. Whenin an unnamed place and timeManuel Roca's enemies hunt him down, they fail to discover Nina, his youngest child, hidden in a hole beneath his farmhouse floor. And so, doing just as her father instructed, she neither speaks nor stirs as he is viciously slain above her hiding place. Only after this carnage will one of the murderers discover Nina's trapdoor. But Tito, a mere boy himself, is so enthralled by the sight of Nina's perfect innocence that he says nothing to his accomplices. By the time she has grown up, Nina's innocence will have bloomed into something else altogether, and one by one the wartime hunters will become the peacetime hunted. But not until a striking old woman calls upon an old man selling newspapers in townthe old man Tito has becomecan we know what Nina will ultimately make of her brutal legacy. With the indelible truth of a fable,Without Bloodreminds us that all wars are the samethe same mistake infinitely repeated in the hearts and deeds of wronged men and womenand that no life can remain untouched by loss or by hope. From the Hardcover edition.

Alessandro Baricco was born in Turin in 1958 and still makes his home there. The author of four previous novels, he has won the Prix Médicis Etranger in France and the Selezione Campiello, Viareggio, and Palazzo al Bosco prizes in Italy.


From the Hardcover edition.