Six Italians writing from the margins: these stories are linked by common themes of belonging, dislocation and identity, and together they take the pulse of a country in turmoil.

In Roberto Saviano's The Opposite of Death, a town in southern Italy is haunted by the war in Afghanistan, where one by one its sons are dying. In Ferengi, Carlo Lucarelli explores the Italian settlement of Eritrea a century ago, when the actions of a maid became pivotal to the fate of an exploitative colonial family. Valeria Parrella's The Prize, set in the Italian countryside during the Second World War, reminds us that revenge is a dish best served cold, while Piero Colaprico's Stairway C is a breathless Milanese crime novel in miniature. Grassroots writers' collective Wu Ming show how an Italian cheese-maker can become a hero in American Parmesan, and in Another Kind of Solitude, Simona Vinci suggests that it is only when we are on the outside, or alone, that we find true freedom.