The Watercolourist
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Winner of the Premio Selezione Campiello prize and the Premio Alessandro Manzoni award for best historical novel, The Watercolourist is an intoxicating romantic mystery set in Italy's idyllic landscapes during the 19th Century.
Young and talented Bianca discovers a world teeming with intrigue and whispered secrets in a grand Milanese villa where she's commissioned to illustrate its magnificent gardens. As luminous strokes of colour bloom on her canvas, her curiosity thickens around the mysterious world of the villa, and its owner, eccentric poet Don Titta.
Drawn deeper into the villa's labyrinth and the enticing whispers of Don Titta and his poet friends, Bianca forgets the dangers that lie in hidden corners. After glimpsing a mysterious figure in the grounds, Bianca becomes determined to unmask the villa's truths, all the while oblivious to the watchful eyes on her.
Against the backdrop of a changing Italy, The Watercolourist is a captivating journey of love, secrets, and art.
Oonagh Stransky
Translated by
Oonagh Stransky has been a translator of Italian literature for over twenty years. Some of the writers whose work she has brought into English include Eugenio Montale, Erminia Dell’Oro, Carlo Lucarelli, and Roberto Saviano. She currently lives in Italy. Her translation of Domenico Starnone’s The House on Via Gemito was shortlisted for the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize, and for the American Literary Translators Association 2024 Italian Prose in Translation Award. Her recent translations of Starnone’s short stories have appeared in the Paris Review, the New Yorker, and the Georgia Review.
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