IL CUSTODE

Einaudi 2026

In a remote village in Sicily, a strip of houses scattered haphazardly along a vast beach, lives the Vasciaveo family: thirteen-year-old Nilo, his mother Agata, and his aunt Rosi. Officially, they work with marble, buying and reselling it, but that is only a cover. For centuries—indeed for millennia—the Vasciaveo have been the custodians of something unspeakable.

The arrival in the village of Arianna—a beautiful young woman adrift—and her daughter Saskia disrupts the fragile balance that holds their lives together. Being guardians of the thing in the bathroom also means being its prisoners. A sacrifice that Nilo, after discovering love, will no longer be able to endure.