The Earth is Falling is a haunting and magical novel based around the existence of an abandoned village outside Naples. The deserted houses that still stand there are peopled with ghosts who live in a perpetual present from which time has effectively been abolished. The village appears to be semi-alive; the landslide which ominously awaits and which will eventually lead to the abandonment of the place has yet to arrive (yet its rumbles are heard).

Pellegrino peoples Alento with eccentrics, luminaries, an eternally optimistic town crier. In the closing pages, the narrator Estella summons the remaining ghosts for a final dinner. The overall effect is unsettling, haunting and uncanny, the trapped souls doomed to repeat their circumscribed daily life for ever, cut off from the world but dimly aware of its continued presence outside.

Prizes

Short-listed for Campiello Prize 2015 (Italy)

'Pellegrino is perhaps the most gifted prose-writer of her generation.' Massimo Onofri, Avvenire; 'An imaginary landscape whose first source of inspiration might be Rosccigno Vecchia, although the precise geographical location doesn't really matter since Alento is a kind of emblem of all the abandoned villages in Italy. The novel is part of a reviving Mediterranean tradition, but it also has something South American about it. (...) We are in the realm of magical realism. Pellegrino doesn't believe in the conventional evidence of death, and tries to demystify it, by bringing back to life all the life that preceded it.' Francesco Durante, Corriere del Mezzogiorno; 'Alento becomes the metaphor for abandonment, for solitude, for the desire not to let the past go and to bring it back to life in memory.' Gerardo Adinolfi, Repubblica; '... an absolutely original and poetic vision' Elena Cambiaghi, La Sicilia

Carmen Pellegrino is an Italian historian and writer who studies marginality in urban and rural abandoned areas. An eclectic scholar, she has investigated some of the salient knots of modernity, concentrating her studies on collective movements of dissidence, focusing her research on racism, social exclusion and the conditions of exploitation of migrants (in ‘The hours of my day’, published in the anthology Qui and Fatigue: stories, tales and reportage from the world of work, 2010, was winner of the award reportage Napoli Monitor). The Earth is Falling was shortlisted for the 2015 Campiello Prize in Italy.