Chiara Barzini





THINGS THAT HAPPENED BEFORE THE EARTHQUAKE
DOUBLEDAY, AUGUST 2017

Penguin Random House Book Page
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“An Italian teenage girl shows up in 1990s Southern California in this culturally astute, strong-voiced novel. Barzini, truly a writer to watch, positions herself astride both American and Sicilian cultures, and packs this visceral book with strong sensations from both. The novel and its heroine, Eugenia, are deeply seductive.”
New York Times

"Los Angeles has had many ghostwriters, from Jack Kerouac to Joan Didion to Nathanael West. The list gets even better with the addition of Chiara Barzini."
O Magazine

"Dark and sophisticated."
BBC

"If you're an Elena Ferrante fan tuck into Things That Happened Before The Earthquake. A cinematic view of the sexy, dirty business of becoming an adult."
Elle.com

"Gorgeously unfiltered… Rendered in feverish prose with an unflinching view of teenage sexuality and no shortage of feisty dialogue."
Vogue

"A can’t miss title."
Los Angeles Times

“There are sex and drugs aplenty but also sweet, tender moments of first love and self-acceptance. Los Angeles is dirtily yet lovingly depicted… Barzini’s is an impressive debut with a distinct point of view.”
—Booklist

“Chiara Barzini writes with a voice that is both tense and open. The effect is surprising, subversive, and singular.”
Jhumpa Lahiri, Pulitzer Prize winning author of Interpreter of Maladies


“Chiara Barzini has pulled off that most dazzling balancing act: combining a deliciously entertaining plot with effortlessly elegant prose. She has an extraordinarily keen eye for cultural nuance. Through her alter-ego Eugenia we come to discover a California as wildly foreign to us as it is to her. A brilliant, sexy, and unexpected take on the immigrant bildungsroman.”
Taiye Selasi, author of Ghana Must Go
 
“Chiara Barzini has written a wild first novel, full of sex, violence, and desperate prayers to the Virgin Mary. This is a brutal and bizarre coming of age story aptly set in one of America’s many crises.”
Catherine Lacey, author of Nobody is Ever Missing


“Chiara Barzini has the heart and the capacity to tell a story that is bright on the surface and profound on the inside.”
—Francesca Marciano, author of The Other Language

“Tectonic plates collide in this book: a girl lands on this continent with both feet planted in a pair of Reebok Pumps and the bared Italian bust and out-thrust tongue meet the buttoned-up American mind head-on. Our author shows us that there’s an America that’s bigger than the narrow confines this young Italian, our protagonist, confronts at her Los Angeles high school—and she discovers it in the body, in the spirit and in our land itself. Zany, rambunctious and deftly told, in this coming-of-age story the heroine is the earthquake.” 
—Atticus Lish, author of Preparation for the Next Life



TERREMOTO
MONDADORI, OCTOBER 2017

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SISTER STOP BREATHING
CALAMARI PRESS, 2012

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«These kaleidoscopic arrangements of sentences and situations are of freakish originality and beauty. They are stories like smashed mirrored jewels, which we look into, recognize ourselves and others, then look closely again and realize we're staring at the delicate close markings of a flower. I found these stories to be like life—full of horror and comedy and wonderment for a world that is both grotesque and fantastical.»
—Jonathan Ames, author of Wake Up, Sir!

«The best thing to come out of Italy since espresso, and it opens your eyes and quickens your heart just as fast.»—Gary Shteyngart, author of Super Sad True Love Story

«A Barzini fiction invites you into its strangeness with poetic and comic authority, and ushers you out before you have a chance to know what hit you. The fabular and the contemporary are tantalizingly conflated such that recognizable settings (Rome, California, Paris) open up into wondrous irreal worlds that entice the senses yet ingeniously elude one’s grasp. Whether she steers us through volcanic craters, antiquity’s sewers, or incestuous swimming pools, Barzini’s imagination, precision and wit make the ride worthwhile. Sister Stop Breathing is as inventive as it is provocative.»—Mary Caponegro, author of All Fall Down



NOT A ROSE
CHARTA, MILAN, NEW YORK, 2012

A volume of essays on our relationship with nature by philosophers, poets, and writers, accompanied by photographs of Heide Hatry’s experimental renditions of flowers. Contributors include: Jonathan Ames, Jonathan Safran Foer, Siri Hustvedt, Rick Moody, Avital Ronell, Stanley Rosen, and Luisa Valenzuela



AUTORITRATTO CON SICILIA
EDIZIONI DRAGO BAGHERIA, 2011

By Frederic Tuten, Italian translation
Illustrations by Mimmo Paladino

 



   

PUBLISHED STORIES

2014
Noon Annual: Adult
Tweed's Magazine (former Coffin Factory): The Mexicans Never Ask
Whiskey Island: Unfair, Linen Trunks, The Poisoning

2013
SleepingFish: Dead Pope
Sidebrow Literary Magazine: Unfair, Dead Sheep, The Guillotine
The Fiddleback Magazine:
Advice for New Human

2012
Vice Magazine Italy: I Primi Figli, Il Primo Nipote, Il Primo Ministro, L'Avvelenamento, Ingiustizia, Sorella Smettila di Respirare
The Milan Review: Ugly Baby

Salt Hill Journal 29: Ron Moss The Mountain Goat
The Coffin Factory: The Mourning Pool
NY Tyrant: The Desolate Priest Boys

2010
Noon Annual: Vauville
SleepingFish: Vulcanoes