The Story of My Purity

The Story of My Purity by Francesco Pacifico is an unmissable novel from an exciting young voice in European fiction.

Thirty years old and already trapped in a sexless marriage, Piero Rosini has decided to dedicate his life to Jesus. Novels and music were filling his head with bullshit; his bourgeois life in a fancy neighborhood had taken him far away from spiritual purity and the Lord's truth. So he's moved to an unfinished housing development on the outskirts of Rome and thrown himself into his work at an ultraconservative Catholic publishing house.

Yet still Piero is suffocating. He can't get his beautiful sister-in-law out of his head. Temptations (both physical and intellectual) are breaking down his religious resolve. He decides to flee to Paris, which turns out not to be the best way of guarding his purity.

Pacifico's exuberant novel brings us Europe old and new and the inner workings of a conflicted but always compelling mind. This is fiction with great humour, intelligence, and vision, from a young writer at the beginning of a tremendous career.

Francesco Pacifico has written for a number of Italian publications, as well as for Rolling Stone and GQ, and has translated into Italian the works of Henry Miller, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Dave Eggers, Will Eisner, and more. He lives in Rome.