The Silent Duchess - Tapa blanda

'The Silent Duchess' won the Premio Campiello, Italy's most prestigious literary prize, selling over a quarter of a million copies. The novel is also a winner of the monthly 'Independent' Award for Foreign Fiction.

'Set in eighteenth-century Italy the story of our heroine, Marianna, and of her family is a fascinating one which manages totally to overpower the reader with its narrative urgency. Maraini brilliantly conveys the mixture of luxury and squalor in which the Sicilian aristocracy lived, and with great skill, communicates every detail through the eyes and nostrils of her Silent Duchess.'
FRANCIS KING, 'Evening Standard'

'Few other novelists have so forcefully expressed the sense that the age they describe is a shaping force in the conduct of their characters. 'The Silent Duchess' has the richness of a saga, and Maraini weaves striking scenes into the narrative with an ease, both memorable and inevitable.'
JOSEPH FARRELL, 'Independent'

''The Silent Duchess' succeeds through its accretion of details. A vivid and hushed account, Maraini's portrayal of the Duchess Marianna's life is blanketed in a strange beauty, like the snow-muffled landscape of winter.'
NICCI GERRARD, 'Observer'

'Dacia Maraini is an artist of considerable power. 'The Silent Duchess' is a novel that would have delighted Nabokov. It is brimming with detail, vividly presented in a style that is abrupt, spiky, and yet luxuriant. Every page presents one with the unexpected. It arouses intense feeling, it provokes thought.'
ALLAN MASSIE, 'Scotsman'