Other People's Children

Other People's Children

$22.00 $22.00 / item
Markup
Markup shared by: Rob Pine
A book that follows two timelines: one contemporary that follows the life of Tommaso a man focused on his day-to-day life working and helping his girlfriend take care of her two children; the other story is about his grandmother's time during WWII. The book is about how even our most prosaic lives are influenced and colored by the past--even when we don't know it.
(Markup shared by Rob Pine on Dec 31, 2025)


A story of complicated families and a wartime secret that ripples down through the generations from a writer of exceptional talent.

Tommaso is just about making it work: travelling abroad for his job, helping his girlfriend with her two unruly sons, and keeping up with the eccentricities of his Italian grandmother, Alma. But as Alma grows increasingly troubled by strange and unsettling memories, Tommaso realises that there is much in her past that he doesn't know. And the more he discovers, the more it seems that the secrets she has guarded for so long might not only overwhelm her, but upend his own precariously balanced life too.

Reaching back to the tumultuous days of the Italian resistance during the Second World War and into the domestic chaos of modern life, this is a story of the past's long shadow, and the families we have and those we make.

Author Image

Ben Faccini is a novelist, writer and translator. The son of an Italian father and Anglo-French mother, Faccini grew up in rural France and London. Having worked for many years at UNESCO in Paris, Faccini has written extensively about educational innovations in the developing world. He is the author of two previous novels, The Water-Breather and The Incomplete Husband. He lives in London and France.