A huge international bestseller, this heartbreaking tale of a tiny Italian village during two World Wars will stay with you forever.

Among the olive groves and vineyards of southern Italy, a boy and a girl are born, moments apart. Far away in the trenches of World War I, their fathers have just died. Now all the men in Vitantonio's family have been wiped out - all twenty-one. All except him.

Growing up together, war seems far away for the two children. But Vitantonio's mother will do anything to protect her son from the curse of death that seems to hang over the family - and so she tells a lie. It is a lie that will bind Vitantonio and Giovanna, the girl who shares his birthday, together over the years. But as the clouds of another war begin to gather on the horizon, it may ultimately drive them apart...