The fortune teller

Giovanni Comisso Award of the City of Treviso (2021)
Cava dei Tirreni City Award (2021)

Giacomo Cassandio, a farmer endowed with the gift of great visionaries, lives at the beginning of the 19th century in the village of Stellata, on the banks of the Po. At a village festival, the lithe gypsy fortune teller Violca Tosca approaches him and reads their shared future in the palm of his hand. A few months later, they get married despite their families. Half of their offspring will inherit Giacomo's fair skin, blue eyes, and dreamy character, while the other half will inherit Violca's dark skin, black eyes, and gift of intuition. But all the members of the family are indelibly marked by an ominous prophecy that is revealed to Violka through the casting of the tarot. The destiny of the Cassandios is to vacillate between their longing to challenge fate and the dangerous habit of chasing their dreams. And they follow their choices to the end, regardless of whether they are dictated by love or revolutionary ideas, by a thirst for justice or the will to change the world.
In a fascinating family saga, Daniela Raimondi captures the great events of Italian history through the adventures of members of the Cassandio family, beginning with the struggle for Italian unification in the mid-nineteenth century and continuing into the twentieth century.

"A novel like a family tree, whose branches weave and unfold like Gabriel García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude." Toute la Culture
"Raimondi follows in the footsteps of Elena Ferrante and Luca di Fulvio". Ouest France
"Prophecy, poetic writing and a touch of magical realism orchestrate a choral narrative that is also the history of Italy." Donna Moderna
"An ode to family, where past and present intertwine and the speech of the dead counts as much as that of the living. A powerful novel, which you can hardly put down." aVoir-aLire.com
"Starting with the revolutionary movements and uprisings of the 19th century and reaching the Lead Years, Raimondi tells the story of a small family of epic proportions. Its heroes defy fate and find themselves confronted with their desires and a dark prophecy that has haunted them for generations." Io Donna
"The epic story of the Cassandio family exudes an aura of magical realism and a sense of the robustness of rural life. The author interweaves the great events of history with the personal experiences of the family members, through the narration of their heartbreaking pain, their small daily conquests, and above all, their big dreams." La Stampa

Pages: 448
Height (cm) & Width (cm): 21 X 14