Publisher's Synopsis
Don Francesco Falcone, local grandee and landowner, desperately wants a son. Following the death of his emotionally distant, haughty wife, he is free to move Concetta, his pregnant mistress and servant, into the house. Refusing to marry Concetta until she produces a male heir, Don Francesco fathers six daughters before Oreste is born. Orestes birth is heralded by a golden river of olive oil oozing through the streets of Grottole the result of Concettas vehement, store-jar-shattering screams but as the locals fear the arrival of the Devil, Don Francesco ignores this bad omen and starts making lavish wedding plans. Amidst the chaos, his eldest daughter runs off with the village priest, shaming the family and bringing an abrupt halt to the proceedings. Here For A Thousand Years depicts the fortunes of the Falcone family, from the poverty-stricken 1860s up to the fall of the Berlin wall. Written in beautifully lyrical prose and full of quirky imagery and rye observation, children are nursed by sows, bandits demand ransoms and the state exacts taxes. The Falcones ethereal dreams are constantly dashed, as they are beleaguered by superstition and misfortune, against a back drop of world wars, fascism, extreme poverty and fairy-tale.
