One afternoon in May, 8 year old Ilaria gets into the car with her dad, expecting to go out to dinner with her mum and sister. Instead, she is taken across the border, on a  whirlwind journey around Italy, from Trieste to Rome and Sicily, sleeping in roadside hotels, singing to the radio, and fearing her often drunk, but loving father. Torn between her life in Geneva with her mother and the seemingly never ending Italian road trip with her father, Ilaria doesn’t know who to side with in her parents’ acrimonious separation. 

Throughout her travels, Ilaria meets new faces, learns how to light a cigarette, discovers when is best to keep quiet around her father, and finds comfort in her lovable teddy bear Birillo. Ilaria’s voice is singular and powerful; while her travels through Italy and the cast of characters around her create an unforgettable image of Italy .

This deeply moving novel explores the fear and confusion felt during this chaotic kidnapping, through the dreamlike eyes of the young girl. Intimate and poignant, Ilaria follows the life of a girl who is learning to navigate the world on her own.

“In a breathtaking novel, Gabriella Zalapi captures the sensations - nothing but the sensations, all the sensations - of a childhood torn between two parents.” La Tribune

“A tale tinged with fear but, above all, bursting with sensitivity.” Le Monde

“Gabriella Zalapi has the art of telling her own story as a smokescreen.” Le Nouvel Obs

“Her writing is all about intimacy in strangely charming books, juggling in all languages between limpidity and skilful blurring. Gabriella Zalapi or modesty incarnate.” Télérama

“This talented Anglo-Swiss-Italian writer has the talent of drawing us into personal and universal stories intermingling the sweetness and brutality of childhood, the hardships girls and women have to overcome to find their place in a world dominated by men who spread themselves out, all with words that glide and resonate with the same clarity, the same grace, as the song of a river flowing between rocks in the heart of a mountain.” Libération