El juego
(Book)

Visualiza un duelo. Dos figuras se enfrentan, sangre de la misma sangre. Uno tiene más de setenta años y es un afamado ilustrador que lleva tiempo viviendo completamente solo. El otro, más bajito, es su nieto: un niño revoltoso de cuatro años con un vocabulario vasto y precoz. Apenas se han visto un par de veces, pero ahora el abuelo va a tenerlo a su cuidado tres días enteros. Los padres han ido a un congreso, o quizá en realidad necesitaban tiempo para averiguar si su matrimonio ha llegado a un callejón sin salida. Cuatro paredes y un balcón serán los límites entre esta historia, la de un abuelo cansado y distraído y un pequeño sargento que lo pone a prueba, y otra historia, en sordina: la de un matrimonio en crisis y un gran amor que amenaza con resquebrajarse. Starnone vuelve a brillar, como en su inolvidable Ataduras, haciendo saltar por los aires las relaciones familiares.

Trick is a stylish drama about ambition, family, and old-age that goes beyond the ordinary and predictable. Imagine a duel between two men. One, Daniele Mallarico, is a successful illustrator who, in the twilight of his years, feels that his reputation and his artistic prowess are fading. The other, Mario, is Daniele's four-year-old grandson. Daniele has been living in a cold northern city for years, in virtual solitude, focusing obsessively on his work, when his daughter asks if he would come to Naples for a few days and babysit Mario while she and her husband attend a conference. Shut inside his childhood home--an apartment in the center of Naples that is filled with the ghosts of Mallarico's past--grandfather and grandson match wits as Daniele heads toward a reckoning with his own ambitions and life choices. Outside the apartment, pulses Naples, a wily, violent, and passionate city whose influence can never be shaken. Trick is a gripping, brilliantly devised drama, "an extremely playful literary composition," as Jhumpa Lahiri describes it in her introduction, by the Strega Prize-winning novelist whom many consider to be one of Italy's greatest living writers.

Text in Spanish, translated from the Italian.