ABOUT
THE BOOK

Summer, Palermo, early 1980s. The air hangs hot and heavy. The Mafia-ruled city is a powder keg ready to ignite. In a boxing gym, a fatherless nine-year-old boy climbs into the ring to face his first opponent.

So begins On Earth as It Is in Heaven, a sweeping multigenerational saga that reaches back to the collapse of the Italian front in North Africa and forward to young Davidù’s quest to become Italy’s national boxing champion, a feat that has eluded the other men of his family.

The brutal struggles for dominance among Davidù’s all male circle of friends; his strict but devoted grandmother, whose literacy is a badge of honor; his charismatic and manipulative great-uncle, who will become his trainer–the vicious scenes and sometimes unsympathetic characters Enia sketches land hard and true.

A meditation on physical violence, love and sex, friendship and betrayal, boxing and ambition, Enia’s novel is also a coming-of-age tale that speaks – sometimes crudely, but always honestly – about the joys and terrors of becoming a man.