I'm Not Scared

The international bestselling novel “of childhood innocence lost in rural Italy [is] a gripping read … a deft masterpiece with never a false note” (The Guardian, UK).

A BBC Two Between The Covers Book Club Pick

Southern Italy, 1978. In the midst of a relentlessly hot summer, as the adults stay inside tending to their own business, six children explore the scorched wheat fields that enclose their tiny Italian village. When the gang find a dilapidated farmhouse, nine-year-old Michele Amitrano makes a discovery so momentous that he doesn’t dare tell a soul. It is a secret that Michele doesn’t fully understand, yet it will force him to question everything and everyone around him, and will bring his innocent world toppling down.

Both “an exquisite parable” and a tense thriller, I’m Not Scared has become a contemporary classic in Italian literature, read and celebrated the world over (Daily Telegraph, UK).

© 2003 Canongate Canons (Ebook): 9781847673572

Translators: Jonathan Hunt

Release date

Ebook: 13 January 2003