nocturne

1st edition, 1992. Dustjacket very good. Pages somewhat age-toned but otherwise clean. Additional images available upon request.

In the years before the second World War, in early June, as regular as the festa of the Madonna del Campo, the ox-drawn convoy of Maestro Rossi's travelling fair moves into the Umbrian village of San Severino. With it come the smallest dwarf in the world, the fat lady and the bearded lady, the strong man and the spiderwoman, camels, monkeys, jugglers, gyspy dancers and other miraculous sights full of mysterious and erotic possibilities. One year Alessandro Mezzanotte leaves his toil in the neighbouring fields to see for himself the sights of the fair. Pulled by the plaited thread of destiny and love, he returns the next evening and encounters fourteen-year-old Valentina with her thick black hair and smell of burnt apples and spun sugar. And so begins a fateful love that will become an obsession and a odyssey.