Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Party with Cassowary

Party with Cassowary

Portnowitz, Todd
San Pietro, Leonardo

Hardcover

General FictionLiterary Fiction

Publisher Price: $27.00

PREORDER - Expected ship date January 19, 2027

ISBN13: 9798217208500
Publisher: Knopf Publishing Group
Published: Jan 19 2027
Pages: 176
Weight: 0.73
Height: 0.50 Width: 5.50 Depth: 8.25
Language: English
A college party in the hills of northern Italy descends into a harrowing and outlandish rite of passage. Like the beguiling bird at its center, Party with Cassowary dares its characters--and its readers--to confront something dangerous, inscrutable, demanding to be touched.

Surprising and spellbinding. --Vincenzo Latronico, author of Perfection

It's the beginning of summer. Isa M., a second-year lit major, is throwing a party at her family's lavish villa on the outskirts of Turin. The music is loud, the prosecco is flowing, and the garden is packed with friends--and maybe a few gate-crashers. The only guest who hasn't arrived yet is Ezio, the boy she's falling in love with.

Then an anonymous gift turns up on the kitchen counter: a bottle of Barbera with a card that reads, Unless someone touches the cassowary before 1am, Ezio dies.

At first it seems like a prank. Except Ezio still isn't answering his phone. And no one's sure who brought the bottle. Or what, exactly, a cassowary is. (Or why the neighbors are keeping one in the surrounding woods!)

As the hours tick by--and the undergrads wade further into a heady mix of alcohol, drugs, jealousy, lust, and dread--the gravity of the dare sinks in. Shifting among a chorus of students (including a Tarot reader, a would-be philosopher in a parka, a perennial tag-along who's been exiled from the group chat, and a shy artist from Puglia caught up in the night's seductive chaos), Party with Cassowary captures the precarity of early adulthood with piercing wit and a generous heart.

Winner of Italy's Premio Mondello, with rights sold around the globe, Leonardo San Pietro's debut is an existential thriller and a magnetic, mannerist portrait of a generation paralyzed by the weight of desire and decision.

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