Anna

It is four years since the virus came, killing every adult in its path. Not long after that the electricity failed. Food and water started running out. Fires raged across the country. Now Anna cares for her brother alone in a house hidden in the woods, keeping him safe from ‘the Outside’. But, when the time comes, Anna knows they must leave their world and find another. By turns luminous and tender, gripping and horrifying, Anna is a haunting parable of love and loneliness; of the stories we tell to sustain us, and the lengths we will go to in order to stay alive.

Reviews of Anna

Ammaniti sets a new standard in post-apocalyptic fiction . . . This story of children running wild in Sicily brilliantly manipulates the usual models even as it transcends their limits . . . In the midst of wonderfully detailed disorder, one girl named Anna struggles to survive, fighting off feral dogs and crazed children and enduring one of recent literature's most nightmarish visions of hell on earth as she tries to feed and protect her young brother, Astor — John Burnside * * Guardian * * Ammaniti's Italian bestseller has been compared to . . . Lord Of The Flies and The Road . . . It's a powerfully disturbing and thought-provoking read * * Daily Mail * * One of Italy's foremost literary talents . . . Combines the wayword fantasy of J.G. Ballard with comic-strip adventure . . . Ammaniti has lost none of his gift for landscape description — Ian Thomson * * Times Literary Supplement * * Brave and uncompromising writing . . . A brutal but moving post-apocalyptic tale set in a world where adults have all been wiped out . . . reminiscent of Lord of the Flies or Cormac McCarthy's The Road . . . written with such heart and compassion for the plight of the characters that you can't help but get sucked in and root for them. Compelling and moving writing — Doug Johnstone * * Big Issue * * Unbeatable storytelling – an immediate and engaging study of humanity at its best and worst * * Financial Times * * A gripping tale of resilience, friendship and sibling love in a brutal and dangerous world. I loved it! — MEGAN BRADBURY, author of EVERYONE IS WATCHING Ammaniti won the Italian Strega Prize for I'm Not Scared, and Anna has the same taut narrative, with straight-from-the-bow suspense, but its mark is philosophical . . . concerned not only with the will to live but also with what makes us alive * * Irish Times * * Ammaniti has an enviable ability to keep readers thoroughly absorbed * * The Herald * * Anna has pretty much everything you could hope for from a post-apocalyptic picaresque adventure story * * London Review of Books * * Set in a dystopian Italy where all the adults are dead . . . Ammaniti has created a totally convincing Lord of the Flies-esque world and young Anna, endlessly resourceful amid the horror and chaos, is a heroine to root for — Alice O'Keefe * * The Bookseller, Editor's Choice * *