Party with Cassowary

A college party in the hills of northern Italy descends into a harrowing and outlandish rite of passage. Like the beguiling bird at its center, Party with Cassowary dares its characters--and its readers--to confront something dangerous, inscrutable, demanding to be touched.

"Surprising and spellbinding." --Vincenzo Latronico, author of Perfection

It's the beginning of summer. Isa M., a second-year lit major, is throwing a party at her family's lavish villa on the outskirts of Turin. The music is loud, the prosecco is flowing, and the garden is packed with friends--and maybe a few gate-crashers. The only guest who hasn't arrived yet is Ezio, the boy she's falling in love with.

Then an anonymous gift turns up on the kitchen counter: a bottle of Barbera with a card that reads, Unless someone touches the cassowary before 1am, Ezio dies.

At first it seems like a prank. Except Ezio still isn't answering his phone. And no one's sure who brought the bottle. Or what, exactly, a cassowary is. (Or why the neighbors are keeping one in the surrounding woods!)

As the hours tick by--and the undergrads wade further into a heady mix of alcohol, drugs, jealousy, lust, and dread--the gravity of the dare sinks in. Shifting among a chorus of students (including a Tarot reader, a would-be philosopher in a parka, a perennial tag-along who's been exiled from the group chat, and a shy artist from Puglia caught up in the night's seductive chaos), Party with Cassowary captures the precarity of early adulthood with piercing wit and a generous heart.

Winner of Italy's Premio Mondello, with rights sold around the globe, Leonardo San Pietro's debut is an existential thriller and a magnetic, mannerist portrait of a generation paralyzed by the weight of desire and decision.