sensational success of the novel from France: the story of a couple who fight against the conventions of the time. 'A magical book about an unshakeable love.' Le Figaro Magazine. Favorite book of booksellers in France. Awarded the Prix Goncourt. *'We will never get over some of the things we lack.' *In the great game of fate, Mimo - Michelangelo Vitaliani - has drawn the wrong cards. Born into poverty, he was given to his uncle in Italy as a young boy to learn the craft of a sculptor. There, in the small Ligurian village of Pietra d'Alba, he meets Viola, daughter of a good family and youngest child of the Orsinis, a respected noble family. Viola seems to be favored by luck, but she is a young woman who does not fit in with the times. She wants to 'fly' - to stand on her own two feet, to break out of the tight social corset that only provides for marriage for a woman of her class. From their first meeting, Viola and Mimo live side by side through the first half of the 20th century, the rise of fascism and the unrest of the world wars. He, the unusually small sculptor, becomes an artist celebrated by the elite; she tirelessly tries to pursue her dreams as an emancipated woman. Both will lose and find each other again and again, as allies or opponents, without ever giving up their friendship. But what good is all Mimo's fame if he has to let Viola go in the end? Biography (Thomas Brovot) Thomas Brovot lives in Berlin as a translator (including Reinaldo Arenas, Juan Goytisolo, Federico Garcia Lorca).