The Origin of Species

“In this winner of the Governor General’s Award for fiction, Alex, a young Italian Canadian in 1980s Montreal, achingly needs to write, to talk, to make order of his life and of the clutter of information he has accumulated. He also wants a girlfriend. Because Ricci is a skilled, language-loving writer, Alex’s life as a skilled, language-loving writer is a rich journey.”

—
Globe
100 Best Books

“Most memorable among the novel’s virtuoso set pieces are a stunning heart-of-darkness episode in the Galápagos and a conjunction of storytelling and evolutionary survival involving the courtship ritual of the masked booby. Deconstruction is relatively easy, Ricci’s book tells us; what is heroic is our struggle to construct, to change and evolve, to be loving and compassionate, and to tell each other stories of hope.”

—
Quill & Quire

“Told in windowpane prose, this story reads as if it has come up through our collective memory. With the shock of recognition, we gain a new understanding of our fragility and our strength.”

~ Governor General’s Award Jury Citation ~

“Ricci’s masterstroke to date. This novel does so well, on so many levels, that it’s hard to know where to begin tallying up the riches … An ambitious, thrilling novel that resists encapsulation and takes not a single misstep … it is also bitterly, achingly funny.”

—
Toronto Star

“
The Origin of Species
is a profoundly moving novel that lovingly creates a world of flawed but very real characters.”

—
Winnipeg Free Press

“An entertaining and emotionally rewarding read, this book will transport Nino Ricci to further heights of literary stardom and could well overtake his first,
Lives of the Saints
, as his signature work—much as the original
Origin of Species
did to the career and life of Charles Darwin.”

—
Ottawa Citizen

“This is a marvelously told story, unbearably poignant … I can hardly think of a book I have enjoyed more this year.”

—J
USTIN
C
ARTWRIGHT
,
The Telegraph

“Extraordinary and dazzling.”

—
Times Literary Supplement

“An impressive debut … more will be heard from this author.”

—
The Guardian

“[Nino Ricci] has written a first novel with hardly a false note.”

—
The Observer

“
Lives of the Saints
is simple, moving, and compelling.”

—
The Spectator

“A beautifully paced and measured first novel … an extraordinary story—brooding and ironic, suffused with yearning, tender and lucid and gritty … perfect pitch and brilliant descriptive powers.”

—
New York Times Book Review

“Nino Ricci’s complex and skillfully fashioned tale of life in an Italian Apennine village offers pleasure too seldom present in contemporary fiction: full and involving characterizations, an exhilarating combination of tightly knit plot and episodic looseness, and a rich sense of lives lived truly communally, in conflict and in balance with one another … exudes a dazzling breadth and richness.”

—
USA Today

“A book to celebrate—a wise, poignant, and poised novel.”

—
Wall Street Journal

“A fine, artful piece of work … a powerful tale.”

—
Washington Post

“This seems to me to be literature at its best, a sense of life lived, a sense of life felt, not without dreams, not without poetry, but without fakery.”

—
Toronto Star

“In a forgotten village lost to time and the world, Nino Ricci unfolds a tragedy of nearly mythic proportions.”

—
Le Monde

“Splendidly, even forcefully written, this is a novel which nags at the soul.”

—
Glasgow Herald

“Compelling in its artistry … [Ricci is] an extraordinarily subtle writer.”

—
The Guardian

“Ricci has written a profound essay on the human soul.”

—
Sunday Telegraph

“Full of sensitive, insightful writing … a strongly voiced and engaging book … Ricci’s observations about family dynamics … are frequently elegant.”

—
Boston Sunday Globe

“Lyrical.”

—
Los Angeles Times

“A superbly sad story … Nino Ricci’s triumph.”

—
Washington Post

“
In A Glass House
is a haunting, lyrical, intelligent coming-of-age novel … the acuity of its observations, the eloquence of its prose, and the hard-earned wisdom of its final pages make it a genuine achievement.”

—
New York Times Book Review

“A superb stylist whose unpretentious prose carries an emotional charge that gathers so slowly and surely that we’re surprised to find ourselves so moved by his characters’ stoically borne crises.”

—
Kirkus Reviews

“Ricci’s poetic prose and fluid plot create a tense and beautiful story whose sad ironies achieve resolution in a haunting conclusion.”

—
Publishers Weekly

“Ricci has spun out a delicate and soulful novel.”

—
TIME

“Outstanding … the work of a writer arrived at startling maturity … The novel’s language and rhythms are quietly extraordinary, both loose-limbed and intense, moving with fluid grace between the sharp here and now of Toronto or rural Italy and the brooding landscape of Victor’s mind … vibrant with life.”

—
Times Literary Supplement

“Ricci manipulates our expectations with an adept, steady hand.”

—
Time Out London

“Absorbing and moving.”

—
Sunday Times

“The smooth surface of Ricci’s prose belies the novel’s richness as it builds surely and lucidly toward a poignant, bittersweet conclusion: Ricci’s exploration of the rupture between old world and new is masterful.”

—
The Observer

“In the beauty of its language, its rich detail of place and character, its humanity and grace and sense of wonder, Nino Ricci’s
Testament
both transcends and revalidates the so-called historical novel. Religion aside, history aside, this is a lovely work of fiction.”

—T
IM
O’B
RIEN
, author of
July, July

“A hypnotic, deeply lyrical presentation of four gospels … A writer of impeccable craft … recreating, in his incantatory prose, the very aroma and the wild, sorcery-filled world through which Jesus walked.”

—P
ICO
I
YER
,
Los Angeles Times Book Review

“Nino Ricci pulls off a genuine tour-de-force.
Testament
’s last fifty pages are grisly, wrenching, and utterly absorbing—Yeshua’s all-too-human suffering and death have a real and terrible power, unrelieved by lightning flashes of divinity or miraculous interventions.”

—
Washington Post

“
Testament
is a remarkable retelling of the Jesus story, doing what great art always does—making what is familiar suddenly fresh, daring, challenging. You will never think of the characters of the gospel accounts in the same way again, which is the good news of this stunning novel.”

—R
EVEREND
S
TEPHEN
K
ENDRICK
, senior minister, First and Second Church, Boston

“The sum of these various reminiscences makes a highly readable narrative … There is, moreover, an element of suspense that is sustained throughout the novel despite—or even because of—the universally known outcome of Jesus’s career.”

—
Toronto Star

“Ricci has given us a contemporary Jesus. Like a palimpsest, with each fresh image superimposed on earlier images, Ricci’s Jesus testifies to the inexhaustible power of story, reminding us that enduring myths are not windows through which we view objective truths, but mirrors framing our own evanescent mortality and morality plays.”

—
Globe and Mail

“
Testament
, a refracted biography of Jesus, becomes too an examination of storytelling itself, for what is Jesus of Nazareth if not a teller of stories? … From the good book Ricci has fashioned a great story.”

—
Quill & Quire

“Covers new, daunting, and unexpected territory … Much of this retelling accumulates a mysterious power of its own, even as it roils the reader.”

—
Commonweal

“A uniquely down-to-earth treatment of the life of Christ that plunges the reader into the sounds, smells, and emotions of his Jewish world.”

—
Utne Reader

“Ricci transcends the stale confines of ’the historical Jesus’ debate and invites us into that imaginative region where Jesus finds a living context.”

—D
R
. B
RUCE
C
HILTON
, director, Institute for Advanced Theology, Bard College, and author of
Rabbi Jesus: An Intimate Biography

“This is a remarkable work—immensely savvy about the nature of human longing, compassionate about human failure, and illuminating about the trajectory of the hero. It’s beautifully written, an endeavor both humble and risky.”

—B
ARRY
L
OPEZ
, author of
Arctic Dreams