‘Veronesi truly knows and loves all matters of the heart’ IAN MCEWAN ‘One of the most skilful and profound Italian storytellers of the past thirty years’ DOMENICO STARNONE Summer, 1972. At his family’s summer house in Versilia, Tuscany, twelve-year-old Gigio Bellandi’s life is changing: caught on the cusp of adolescence, he finds the familiar places and people newly strange and intoxicating. As he discovers the adult thrills of music and reading, Gigio begins to learn who he is and to see his family without the veils of childhood. And when Astel Raimondi enters his orbit – a girl who kindles dreams and feelings he could never have imagined – his young existence is changed forever. But every new chapter is also an ending, though it is harder to recognise at the time. And as an unexpected storm starts to threaten the golden days of summer, Gigio’s world will be overturned forever. Reconstructing that lost season with vivid intensity, Black September is an unforgettable coming-of-age novel about the fragility of innocence, the irreversible bloom of first love and the strange wonder of self-discovery, from one of European literature’s greatest storytellers.