Dark is the Morning
Published on 7. May 2026
Book
Hardback
256 pages
978-1-0359-0962-9 (ISBN)
Description
Sometimes love isn't where you belong
In a mountain village in the Abruzzo region of Italy, Gino, a troubled young man, realises that his childhood sweetheart Franca can give his life the happiness and stability he needs. They seem made for each other, and move to a remote house in the countryside - but there is something in Franca's past that haunts Gino.
Descending into pathological jealousy and resentment towards a married man who had been Franca's lover, Gino is unable to stop himself imagining the worst, and embarks on a violent path that has catastrophic consequences.
Shifting between tenderness and paranoia, beauty and tragedy, this is an extraordinary novel from one of the UK's most unpredictable and celebrated writers.
In a mountain village in the Abruzzo region of Italy, Gino, a troubled young man, realises that his childhood sweetheart Franca can give his life the happiness and stability he needs. They seem made for each other, and move to a remote house in the countryside - but there is something in Franca's past that haunts Gino.
Descending into pathological jealousy and resentment towards a married man who had been Franca's lover, Gino is unable to stop himself imagining the worst, and embarks on a violent path that has catastrophic consequences.
Shifting between tenderness and paranoia, beauty and tragedy, this is an extraordinary novel from one of the UK's most unpredictable and celebrated writers.
Reviews / Votes
A wonderfully moody, moving novel, shot through with sadness and with strangeness, and with a simmering power entirely its own. * Sarah Waters * Lyrical, intense, and haunting, Thomson's Italian psychodrama displays incredible narrative mastery and has the elegance and fluency of a fable. So beautifully written. * Chloe Aridjis * Beautiful and seething. I liked it deeply. * Claire-Louise Bennet * An extraordinary writer * Samantha Morton * Utterly gripping. There isn't a writer on the planet who mines the precariousness of the human condition with such terrifying power and clarity. * Julie Myerson * Gripping * Literary Review * Compelling ... an unsettling fable of a romance infected by obsessive jealousy. Themes of love, magic and madness play out with Rapunzel vibes, wreathed in woodsmoke. * The Gloss * Thomson's skill is to layer his trademark style of stunned, post-traumatic prose with the seething energy of gossip and paranoia ... It is perhaps the ideal holiday read: frictionless at the level of the sentence; stealthy, romantic and utterly unpredictable in every other way. * Financial Times * A beautifully wrought, achingly sad exposition of flawed and frail humanity * Saga *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Dimensions
Height: 158 mm
Width: 236 mm
Thickness: 25 mm
Weight
426 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-0359-0962-9 (9781035909629)
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Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Person
RUPERT THOMSON is the author of eight highly acclaimed novels, of which Air and Fire and The Insult were shortlisted for the Writer's Guild Fiction Prize and the Guardian Fiction Prize respectively. His most recent novel, Death of a Murderer, was shortlisted for the 2008 Costa Novel Award. His memoir This Party's Got to Stop was published in 2009.