When young Vittorio Innocente's mother, Cristina, is bitten by a snake during an encounter with a blue-eyed stranger in the family barn, the superstitions and prejudices rampant in their small Italian town immediately roil to the surface. But the worst is yet to come for the independent-minded Cristina. Eight months pregnant and unable to abide her treatment in the village any longer, Cristina books a passage to Canada for herself and Vittorio, although it will not be to join her irascible husband Mario, who sailed there when Vittorio was an infant.

A national bestseller for seventy-five weeks, Lives of the Saints won the Governor General's Literary Award for Fiction, the Books in Canada First Novel Award, and the Bressani Prize. It is the first novel in the Vittorio Innocente Trilogy.

NINO RICCI's best-selling Lives of the Saints (published in the United States as The Book of Saints) won the Governor General's Award for fiction, the SmithBooks/Books in Canada First Novel Award, and the F. G. Bressani Prize. The New York Times Book Review hailed it as “an extraordinary story — brooding and ironic, suffused with yearning, tender and lucid and gritty . . . [The author has] perfect pitch and brilliant descriptive powers.” This was the first book in a trilogy and was followed by In a Glass House — “beautifuly written and tireless in its pursuit of emotional truth” (Times Literary Supplement) — and Where She Has Gone, which was a finalist for the Giller Prize.

Nino Ricci's profile page

• Winner, Betty Trask Award for Fiction
• Short-listed, <i>Los Angeles Times</i> Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction
• Winner, Winifred Holtby Prize for Best Regional Novel
• Winner, F.G. Bressani Literary Prize for Prose
• Winner, Governor General's Literary Award For Fiction
• Winner, W.H.Smith/<i>Books in Canada</i> First Novel Award

“A wise novel, elegant and compassionate.”

The Ottawa Citizen

“It is so lucid, it is dazzling. This seems to me to be literature at its best.”

The Toronto Star

“A beautifully paced and measured first novel … an extraordinary story – brooding and ironic, suffused with yearning, tender and lucid and gritty … perfect pitch and brilliant descriptive powers.”

The New York Times

“Nino Ricci has achieved a novel of remarkable beauty and unforgettable power … belongs on the shelf reserved for writers such as Chatwin, Ondaatje and Flannery O’Connor. I cannot praise him too highly.”

Timothy Findley

“This is a marvellously told story, unbearably poignant … I can hardly think of a book I have enjoyed more this year.”

The Telegraph

“A gem of a novel, and its author is blessed with the rare ability to recreate a world entire and make us believe in it.”

The Globe and Mail