Stephen Burke’s The Good Italian is one of six books on the shortlisrt for this year’s Historical Writers’ Association Debut Crown Award in new historical fiction.
The other shortlisted titles are: The Spring of Kasper Meier by Ben Fergusson; Wake by Anna Hope; The Devil in the Marshalsea by Antonia Hodgson; The Winter Pilgrims by Toby Clements; and The Strangler Vine by MJ Carter.
“It’s a testament to the incredible talent of these authors that we couldn’t narrow the shortlist down to merely five books,” said association chairwoman Manda Scott. “We were captivated by their stories, thrilled by their plots and loved their characters. It is going to be a very hard task to pick a winner. The Debut Crown competition is such a great opportunity for us to showcase the wealth of authors who are writing wonderful new historical fiction.”
Burke, a Dublin filmmaker now living in Sardinia, has already been shortlisted in the historical romance category of the 2015 Romantic Novel Awards. His novel, The Good Italian, is set in the Italian colony of Eritrea in 1935, with Mussolini's pillaging of Africa as its backdrop. The book's lonely narrator, harbour master Enzo Secchi, begins a morally questionable relationship with a local woman, Aatifa, that brings trouble for both parties when Italy forbids such liaisons.
Burke was initially drawn to the history of Eritrea and its people as he saw similarities to Ireland’s colonial past. “But as I researched, I was intrigued by the fact that Mussolini had criminalised relationships between Italians and Eritreans,” he says. “Forbidden love has been the basis for so many works from Romeo and Juliet, Anna Karenina, The Great Gatsby, all the way to The English Patient and Twilight. I chose a love story as the spine of my book because it had a real historical foundation.”
Kevin Gildea, reviewing The Good Italian in The Irish Times, wrote: "any reservations are lost in the propulsion of the powerful narrative. It's a really good book, which features excellent storytelling and rounded characters to really care about. It is a book with film written all over it."
The £2,000 Debut Crown Award will be given to the winning author during the 2015 Harrogate History Festival, which takes place in October.
