Moving beyond stereotypical tales of poverty and deprivation in southern Italy, The Tomb of the Divers weaves an immigrant yarn about small-time artists and crooks who, over the course of a century, wend their way from Basilicata to the anarchist enclaves of Paterson, New Jersey and from fascist Italy during World War II to Buenos Aires a er its "dirty war" of the 1980s.

This multigenerational story is told by narrators Rosanna and Max, siblings who dig into family archives and dispute their revelations. But Francine Masiello doesn't let us distinguish history from fiction, truth from lies; instead, writing with pleasure and wit, she reminds readers of that old Italian saying . . .

It's not true, but I believe it

FRANCINE MASIELLO is a writer and critic who has taught at the University of California at Berkeley where she holds the Ancker Distinguished Professorship in the Humanities (Emerita). With a long career as a Latin Americanist, she published on topics ranging from nineteenth-century literature to avant-garde movements of the 1920s. In recent years, she has turned to the representation of the senses under neoliberal order and now writes about the Global South. She has lived in New York, Italy, and Argentina, and has published fiction in English and Spanish. "The Tomb of the Divers" is her first novel.