Anna

In this international best seller, Premio Strega winner Ammaniti (The Crossroads) imagines postapocalyptic devastation wrought by a virus, a scenario seen frequently in literature today but vivified here. Red Fever has swiftly dispatched all adults, leaving children to grow up alone until they become old enough to contract the disease and die. In scorching language, Ammaniti describes a desolate world in which Anna fights to protect her little brother, Astor, strictly following instructions left by their dying mother. Returning home after foraging for food, Anna finds that Astor has been kidnapped by a group of feral children and goes after him, befriending unaccountably sunny Pietro and a fierce black dog as they head for an abandoned hotel where the children think a mysterious personage called the Little Lady can save them. The uneasy balance between the hopefulness of companionship, particularly familial, and the bleak lack of future the children can anticipate drives this novel.