The modest apartment on Via Gemito smells of paint and white spirit. The furniture is pushed up against the wall to create a make-shift studio, and drying canvases must be moved off the beds each night.

Federì, a railway clerk, is convinced that, if he didn’t have a family to feed, he’d be a world-famous painter. Talented, ambitious, and frustrated, his life is marked by bitter disappointment. His long-suffering wife and their four sons bear the brunt.

Years later, his first-born son will tell the story of a man he spent his whole life trying not to resemble.

Narrated against the background of a Naples still marked by WWII and first published in Italy over 20 years ago, The House on Via Gemito is a masterpiece of contemporary Italian literature.