In his debut novel, Francesco Aloia comes to terms with the past and his family, keeping his grandmother Ada's teachings firmly in mind. After leaving home and finding his own path, he returns to the places of his childhood during a summer and confronts a particularly "overbearing" grandfather, Tanino 'e Bastimento, a man of honor who, after a couple of murders and many years in prison, after challenging a Camorra boss, now must face one final duel "in absentia"—this time with his grandson.

Metaphysical and blasphemous novel about the tragedy of war that never meets a clean end with a peace treaty. The war goes on, residing within its victims who carry it from one generation to the next.

Malwina, an exceptionally sensitive girl, experiences her grandmother’s wartime memories in her dreams. This makes her exist in two parallel realities at once: the 1940s Eastern borderlands and Siberia along the 1990s Poland. Those realities seep and bleed through one another, making Malwina a catcher of her survivor grandmother’s dreams, or perhaps a dybbuk who gives voice to the dead. To Malwina, the war persists, haunting her day and night alike. Poignant and piercing, Koniec is an impressively well-crafted prose.