As white as Milk, as Red as Blood

Leo is an ordinary sixteen-year-old: he loves to hang out with his friends, play soccer, and zip around on his motorbike. The hours he has to spend at school are a drag, and his teachers are “an endangered species he hopes will soon be extinct.” When a new history and philosophy teacher arrives, Leo greets him with cynicism. But this young man turns out to be different. His eyes sparkle when he talks, and he encourages his students to live intensely, to follow their dreams. Leo’s dream is called Beatrice, the prettiest girl in the school. Beatrice is pure passion: she can open the gates of paradise with just a look. When Leo learns she has leukaemia, he is forced to search inside himself, to bleed, and then to be reborn. In the process he comes to understand that dreams cannot die, and he finds the strength to believe in something bigger than himself.

This mesmerising, coming-of-age novel unfolds through Leo’s inner monologue. At times brilliant and irreverent, at others deeply moving, warm, and touching, it recounts an adolescent’s discovery of suffering, fear, and death, and offers some powerful and intensely poetic answers. A tale of love and loss, halfway between Love Story and Dead Poets Society. A universal yet wonderfully unique and charming story.

ALESSANDRO D’AVENIA (thirty-two) holds a PhD in Classics, is a literature teacher and a screenwriter. This is his first novel.

Rights sold to: Germany/BTB, Spain/Grijalbo, France/Lattes, Catalunya/Rosa del Vents, Netherlands/De Bezige Bij, Greece/Patakis, Portugal/Lua de Papel, Brasil/Bertrand, Russia/Ripol, Croatia & Serbia/Algoritam, Hungary/Europa, Turkey/Turkuvaz, Taiwan/Morning Star, Bulgaria/Obsidian Press, Albania/Dudaj; Lithuania/Alma Littera, Slovenia/Druzina

Hardcover with flaps
Literary Fiction, 254 pages

Available product forms