The break is over!

He fears that his girlfriend might be serious about him, and just as much that she might leave him. But his biggest concern is that he does not want to take over his father's bar under any circumstances. More out of defiance than anything else, Marcello applies for a PhD position at the University of Pisa – and to everyone's surprise, including his own, he gets it. Marcello quickly becomes entangled in the intrigues of a legendary literature professor who imposes a topic for his doctoral thesis on him: the literary work of left-wing terrorist Tito Sella. But why is his professor so interested in Sella, a little-known figure who died in prison? And what does his supposedly lost autobiography reveal?


Dario Ferrari tells the highly comical and engaging story of Marcello, who successfully resists growing up – and whose boundaries are becoming increasingly blurred: between literature and life, between the writing terrorist and himself.

In conversation with Anna Vollmer, Italian bestselling author Dario Ferrari talks about a precarious generation that faces a rather hopeless present with all kinds of tricks and a great deal of humour.

Dario Ferrari, born in Viareggio, Tuscany, in 1982, has a doctorate in philosophy – a title which, according to him, is only good for embellishing short biographies like this one. He teaches at a secondary school in Rome and translates from English. "Die Pause ist vorbei" (The Break is Over) has found over 100,000 readers in Italy, won various literary awards and been published in several languages.