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Serpent's Tail has acquired the title that won this year's Italian equivalent of the Man Booker Prize.
World English rights to Stabat Mater by Tiziano Scarpa, which won the Premio Strega, were bought by publisher Pete Ayrton directly from Francesca Manzoni at Einaudi, the Italian publisher of the novel.
Stabat Mater is set in 18th-century Venice and is written as a letter to the unknown mother of an orphan. The orphan, Cecelia, is a talented violinst and becomes Antonio Vivaldi’s muse. The title will be published in early 2011.
Ayrton said: "Capturing the creative process is for a writer the most difficult of tasks. In Stabat Mater Tiziano Scarpa takes the reader right inside Vivaldi's music making. Not at all incidental to this process is Venice, which the Venetian Scarpa knows inside out.
"Like a peach bellini, Stabat Mater is an exquisite aesthetic experience."
Scarpa has previously written other novels including Venice is a Fish: A Cultural Guide, which was also published by Serpent's Tail. He also wrote a radio play titled Pop Corn which was aired by the BBC.