She burned to heal. She writes to survive. And from the ashes, she will rise.
FIAMMA is a hauntingly poetic novel about grief, memory, and transformation. Through a series of letters to her late father, a young woman retraces the path of her pain - including a silent battle with bulimia - and the first sparks of her rebirth.
The novel opens with the protagonist's name, Fiamma - Italian for flame - and ends with Ashes, tracing an emotional arc of destruction, intimacy, survival, and renewal.
After losing her father, Fiamma writes what she never dared to say aloud. These unsent letters become her sanctuary, a space where truth can finally breathe. Alongside her voice, a third-person narrative reveals the hidden inner worlds of those around her:
Sara, Fiamma's mother, caught between distance and survival
Lorenzo, a street artist with a tender spirit
Elife, a quirky friend who sees the world differently and dresses beyond gender norms
Blue, a homeless woman who speaks in riddles and rhymes
Told in five parts - Fiamma (Flame), Smoke, Light, Heat, and Ashes - the novel is both raw and lyrical, exploring trauma, loss, and the fragile power of healing.
Second edition. First published in 2018 by MutatuM Publishing.
"This novel reminds us that the extraordinary nature of each of us lies precisely in the fragility of being human: in falling, and in finding the strength to rise again."
- Iacopo Melio, afterword to the first edition
"A work that shines a light on an illness still too often underestimated: bulimia."
- Emanuele Bonini, EuNews
"A novel you read in one breath, one of those stories that leaves you with a sudden sense of loss, an emptiness, because you don't want to let go of its characters."
- Maria Pia Nocerino, Magazine Pragma