Gravity

'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.

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.