Anywhere But Home

The English-language debut of the acclaimed international bestseller—Anywhere but Home crosses continents, cultures, and generations to tell a sweeping story of self-discovery, finding your own place in a new world, and the revelatory mysteries of being a family.

Milan, 2014. Julia, a young and brilliant German designer, is about to launch the fashion show that could bring the breakthrough success she has sacrificed so much to achieve. All her dreams for the future are on the brink of reality—until an unknown past comes to find her. A grandfather she never knew existed approaches her with an astonishing claim. Julia’s father, believed dead for decades, is still alive. As a great lie is revealed, Julia embarks on a journey to uncover the lost pieces of her past. It takes her on a tour through Italy—from Milan to Naples to Sicily, back three generations to an immigrant heritage that struggled to build new roots in Germany after the war, and to secrets that have remained hidden for sixty years.

Milan, 1954. Vincent, a handsome German engineer for BMW, arrives with the task of testing the Isetta, a revolutionary Italian car. His interpreter is the talented and enigmatic Giulietta, and the two soon fall passionately in love. Giulietta is full of life and dreams—she loves to design and sew clothes—but is held back by her family, who emigrated from Sicily, and by a promise that already binds her to another man. She will find herself forced to choose between love and duty, freedom and tradition—it is a choice that will mark the fate of generations to come.

A saga of love and loss between two people and two countries, Anywhere but Home is a heartbreakingly beautiful story of forging new lives across foreign landscapes and cultures, of old wounds and forgiveness, and of the enduring bonds of family.

Daniel Speck is an award-winning screenwriter for film and TV and a bestselling novelist. He was born in 1969 in Munich and studied literature, film history, and screenwriting in Munich and Rome. A passionate traveler, lover of Mediterranean countries, and builder of bridges between cultures, he draws his inspirations for his films and novels from the personal stories of people he encounters. His debut novel, Anywhere but Home, originally published as Bella Germania and translated into seven languages, was on the Spiegel bestseller list for eighty-five weeks. It was Germany’s most successful debut novel of 2016 and adapted by Speck into a television miniseries. In addition to teaching screenwriting in Germany and Italy, Speck is the author of the bestselling novel Piccola Sicilia and has written the screenplays for the films Wedding Fever in Campobello and My Crazy Turkish Wedding for which he received a Grimme Award and the Bavarian Television Award.

Jaime McGill is originally from Omaha, Nebraska, and spent eleven years in Berlin before discovering the endless summers of the American South. She has translated over a dozen novels, including works by bestselling German authors Jessica Koch, Oliver Pötzsch, Joline Hayes, and Emily Bold. When not working, Jamie can be found holding a bass clarinet, a cookbook, or a twenty-sided die.