A NOVEL WITHIN A NOVEL, a meta-fiction of exchange between the narratives of its two characters — the loosely married couple Giano and Clarissa — this book is direct, humorous, and full of surprises. It captures a microcosm of modern Rome, a world deceptively calm and only apparently in order. As the characters traverse Piazza Navona, the Pantheon and the historic center, Malerba exposes the crises that threaten to tear them and us apart: from climate change to the absence of faith or the security of family, from an obsession with casual sex, to the worship of a hyper-technological modernity. Malerba also criss-crosses the porous boundary between fiction and reality. What it would take to restore their marriage — and their narratives — to their “imperfect balance” might be nothing less than an “architectural” re-ordering of superhuman capacities. Translated by Miriam Aloisio and Michael Subialka,— Google Books

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