Winner of the Campiello First Novel Prize and a finalist for Italy's most important literary award, the Strega, 70% Acrylic 30% Wool announces the arrival of an exceptional new literary talent.
In Leeds, England, it has been winter for so long that nobody is old enough to remember what came before. At least it seems that way to Camelia, a young Italian woman who inhabits that wintery wasteland with her mother, once a renowned flautist, now a mute depressive. For some years now, since the death of her husband in a freak accident, Camelia's mother no longer speaks and the two women communicate in a wordless language of their own invention. The odds are stacked against either woman ever finding her way back to a normal life, until, that is, Camelia meets Wen. Wen is a local shop owner who has fallen for Camelia. In an effort to woo her, he begins to teach her Chinese. Through this new language of signs and subtle variations Camelia will learn to see the world anew and, in it, a chance for renewal.
In a breathtaking literary style inspired by the syncopated rhythms of modern music, Viola Di Grado has given her readers an unusual love story, one as unpredictable as the human heart itself. Side-splittingly funny at times, heartbreaking at others, 70% Acrylic 30% Wool will find admirers among readers of fiction by contemporary novelists like Jennifer Egan and Karen Russell
