Premio Pavese, Premio Matteotti

“Mazzantini explores displacement and the effect of political chaos on individual lives in this extremely brief but intense story of Libyans seeking refuge in Italy and Italians seeking their lost past in Libya… A tragedy for our time.”
Kirkus Review

“Mazzantini’s lyrical novel puts a human face on migration and displacement.”
Booklist

Farid is a Libyan child who lives in the desert and has no best friend but a gazelle. Vito is a Sicilian boy who grew up listening to stories told by his mother and grandmother about how Gaddafi threw them out of Tripoli in the Seventies.

When Farid’s beautiful young mother Jamila tries to escape Libya by boat, it is the first time that Farid will see the sea. This is the same sea into which Vito stares from a beach on the opposite side—Farid and Jamila’s destination. Unfortunately, the Mediterranean’s wide blue surface does not fulfil its promise of a new life for the two young refugees. Instead, it becomes their prison.
A tale of moving intensity, Morning Sea is about the universally poignant subject of human migration. It is about the fate of those exiled from their houses, relatives and roots; it is about the violence of nature and war; and it is about the strength of women compelled by injustice to defend their children’s futures. With terse and astute language, Mazzantini captures perfectly the dark, uncertain quality of our present days, when as ever we must commit ourselves to the right of all humans to live with dignity and respect—and the right of all children to be happy.