Gravity by Ada D'adamo

Gravity by Ada D'adamo

'Now that you've grown and I've fallen ill, our bodies can no longer fit together.'

Winner of the Strega Prize 2023

Ada d’Adamo is mother to Daria. Their days are absorbed by caregiving and routine. Daria’s profound needs remained undetected in pregnancy, and with her birth, Ada’s world is remade.

As a dancer she must use her physicality in new ways, to keep her daughter safe. As a writer she must find a language to communicate beyond words. And when, on the cusp of her fifties, Ada herself becomes gravely ill, she takes the most courageous decision of all: to leave Daria their story.

This is Gravity, a journey of isolation, anger and sometimes despair, through moments of joy and exquisite tenderness, towards a love stronger than life.

'A novel that delves into the reader's heartIt took the precise and implacable language of this writer to support such a ferocious sentiment. You enter this book with enormous ease, but you come out of this book changed. There is such an amount of life in its pages that it leaves us breathless.'

-- Elena Stancanelli

'A magnificent book. A wonderful dialogue between a mother and a daughter... A story like this belongs to everyone. It's a gift: in these cases we say thank you, and we smile.'

-- Concita de Gregorio

'A book about pain is successful when it is also a book full of happiness. And when you read the first page, you understand that Come d'aira is a book that radiates happiness.'

-- Paolo di Stefano

'A magical book. You read it and you think that no one can manage to bear so much anguish, and at the same time you think that no, it's not true, it can be done because they did it and so many people do it, because this is nothing but life.' 

-- Elena Stancanelli

'It took very few pages, or perhaps a few lines, to understand that that was literature, and that I was reading a book that I would find marvellous.' 

-- Francesco Piccolo

'A book whose reading gives off a light on every page.' 

-- Lisa Ginzburg

Ada d’Adamo was an Italian essayist and poet. After giving birth to her disabled daughter, Daria, d’Adamo became an advocate for people with disabilities and for inter-abled families. While working on a memoir for her daughter, she was diagnosed with stage four breast cancer. She passed away on 1 April 2023. Three months later, this memoir, Gravity, won the Strega Prize.

Alex Valente is a highly regarded translator of Italian literature. He has translated multiple books in both Italian and French, including works by Elena Varvello, Valeria Parrella and Michela Murgia, as well as translating role-playing games and game manuals. In 2017, he received the English PEN Translates Award for his translation of Elena Varvello’s Can You Hear Me?. His work has been published in The New York Times Magazine, The Massachusetts Review, The Short Story Project and PEN Transmissions.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781836750147
ISBN 10	1836750145
Title	Gravity
Author	Ada D'adamo
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Akoya Publishing
Year published	2026-07-09
Number of pages	144
Prizes	Winner of Premio Strega Giovani 2023 (Italy), Winner of Premio Flaiano 2023 (Italy), Winner of Premio Mondello 2023 (Italy), Commended for Premio Campiello 2023 (Italy)
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.