In Trick, Domenico Starnone presents an unusual duel between two formidable minds. One is Daniele Mallarico, a once-successful illustrator who feels his artistic prowess fading. The other is Mario, Daniele's four-year-old grandson. Daniele is living in virtual solitude in Milan when his daughter asks him to come to Naples to babysit Mario for a few days

Shut inside his childhood home--an apartment in the center of Naples that is filled with memoires of Daniele's past--grandfather and grandson match wits as Daniele heads toward a reckoning with his own ambitions and life choices. Meanwhile, Naples pulses outside, a wily, passionate city whose influence can never be shaken.

As translator Jhumpa Lahiri says in her introduction, Tricks is "an extremely playful literary composition" by the Strega Prize-winning novelist whom many consider to be one of Italy's greatest living writers.