La forma del silenzio

A hearing and speech impaired child who loses everything, a painful secret kept for twenty years, and two tormented souls seeking each other. 

Leo is six years old. He was born deaf and uses sign language and the language of love with his family. But the time has come to start school, so Leo is sent far away from home, to a special school where sign language – the language of animals, according to the Gospel – is forbidden. His life suddenly becomes hard and unfathomable. One night, in 1964, during a heavy snowfall, Leo disappears. Police enquiries and searches lead nowhere: no one ever hears from him again. At least not until nineteen years later, when Michele, a former school friend of Leo’s, arrives in the consulting room of his sister Anna, a psychologist. He starts telling his story, starting from that winter’s night.

“Stefano Corbetta narrates family drama without making it weepy, with a tension that captures the reader like a thriller, without an easy happy ending” – «la Repubblica»