Giovanna's Navel

A scintillating collection from the award-winning author of The Ice-Cream Makers and Mama TandooriThe vivid characters in these stories share lives marked by coincidences, deeply felt passions, impulsive decisions, and missed opportunities. There's Ezio, a lonely apple-picker dangerously obsessed with spirited teenager Giovanna. Heinrich is a quiet ticket inspector who watches his passengers live their lives as he longs for a meaningful connection of his own. Klaus is a young man reflecting on his first unrequited love, Eva. And Paul's experiences of loss bring him to a new life. As they look back and narrate their histories, each reflects on the circuitous paths that life took them, and on the relationships that never came to pass. Melancholic yet tender, these beautifully rendered atmospheric stories explore loss, longing, coming of age, and regret, and speak to the humanity in all of us.

Ernest van der Kwast is a Dutch author born in Mumbai, India, in 1981. He made his debut in 2005 with the novel Sometimes Things Are Better When People Applaud. His breakthrough book is Mama Tandoori, which became a bestseller in the Netherlands and Italy upon publication, and has to date sold more than 100,000 copies. Giovanna's Navel is the third of his books to be published in English. He lives in Rotterdam.