La hija de él

Livia is forty years old, Italian, and lives in New York. She never wanted to have children. When she meets Arno, they soon begin a relationship. But, at a certain age, love rarely arrives alone: ​​he has a five-year-old daughter, Emma. At first, Livia finds an unexpected appeal in his fatherhood; however, she soon realizes that their relationship will never be just between the two of them. Emma’s needs, whims, and sheer presence invade the couple’s emotional space, forcing Livia to inhabit a complex and distorted reality. The relationship between children and their parents’ new partners has been part of our collective imagination since the days of Cinderella. In *His Daughter*, Chiara Marchelli strips away the fables and archetypes to explore—with sober elegance and an uncompromising, clear-eyed perspective—the complexity of contemporary bonds. Intense and incredibly powerful, the novel transforms an increasingly common, yet rarely depicted, experience into a mirror for our own contradictions, the secret violence of desire, and the fragility hidden behind every gesture.