The Rabbit Punch

'Beautifully restrained' JHUMPA LAHIRI 'Hypnotic . . . filled with unforgettable characters' SANDRO VERONESI It is a June morning in Milan when Sandro abandons his flat, his job and the increasingly unfulfilled promises of a stiflingly hostile city to return to his hometown of Rimini, on the Adriatic coast. His mother, Caterina, has been dead for a few years, but his father - headstrong, taciturn Nando - soldiers on in the same house of Sandro's youth. The two men could not be more different - Nando a former railway worker, Sandro a young professional in advertising - but they have one thing in common: their passion for winning. Nando and Caterina used to dance in amateur ballroom competitions up and down the Riviera - and they danced to win. Sandro inherited his obsession with success from them, but the stakes are a lot higher at the card table than on the dancefloor. As the days and weeks go by and their forced cohabitation gently returns them to the old rhythms of a past life - sweet in its nostalgia but punctured by memories heavy with sorrow - it becomes clear that both Nando and Sandro are hiding difficult truths. Where does Nando disappear to every night, driving around Rimini in his battered car, his old dancing shoes hidden in the trunk? And what did Sandro leave in Milan - besides an empty flat and a broken heart?