A story of love, dreams, exile and tragedy, told with heartbreaking beauty ‘Although if they are asked before they die, they all say they came here for a better life, they do not always find a better life, do they?’ In the Victorian town of Mitrefo, tobacco is grown, an Italian cinema and cafe open, and people travel back and forth from Italy. A boy fishes, wanders the countryside and watches a community form, with its joys, scandals and shared understandings. Interspersed are the ‘grotesques’ – indelible and terrible events that sit alongside the better future they all seek. In The Immigrants, Moreno Giovannoni depicts a family as they build a new life in a strange land. Through love and exile, industry and tragedy, their unspoken dreams and fears unfold in this astonishing and moving book.