Giuseppe has red hair, pimples, and an inexhaustible reserve of money in his wallet. Vincenzo is good looking and serious, like any respectable adversary. The third friend is the one telling the story: with caustic precision, this restless narrator records dizzying teenage discoveries, the lazy inertia of the high school years, and the plunge into adulthood. The city is Bari in southern Italy, the time, the 1980s. The era of ideologies has been killed off—the streets are full of optimism; commercial television channels are recalibrating people’s desires and aspirations; “something akin to a storm front of madness” is running through Italy’s economy. The times are moving fast, and the glow of so much burned money lingers on. And under those ashes lies still more money, smoldering with the desire to be passed from hand to hand.

And yet, as the three boys tackle life’s challenges, it becomes clear that things are not so simple. Despite their families’ evermore luxurious homes, despite the success of their fathers (a businessman obsessed with social climbing, a famous lawyer, and a talented ex-mechanic who has borrowed money from the wrong people), despite their mothers— or stepmothers—who wear out designer heels walking from one shop window to the next, the radar behind these adolescents’ eyes detects unexpected vibrations.

Nicola Lagioia has written a mature, angry coming-of-age novel. The writing is taut, perceptive, and precise, reaching sparkling heights in a story of friendship, betrayal, and generational conflict, which ultimately takes us to the beginnings of our own time in history, and to the eternal adolescence of a country that is growing old without ever having grown up.

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Nicola Lagioia was born in Bari in 1973. He has published novels, story collections, and essays in Italian. Bringing It All Back Home is his first English-language work.