The Silent Duchess

More about the book

The international bestseller from Italy's foremost woman writer—now in paperback. Dacia Maraini is a finalist for the 2011 Man Booker International Prize Set in Sicily in the early eighteenth-century, the novel tells the story of Marianna, the daughter of an aristocratic family and the victim of a mysterious childhood trauma that has left her deaf and mute, trapped in a world of silence. In luminous language that conveys both the keen visual sight and the deep human insight possessed by her remarkable main character, Dacia Maraini captures the splendor and the corruption of Marianna's world and the strength of her unbreakable spirit.