Ottavia Virzì

In Rome it hasn’t rained for three years and the lack of water is overturning rules and habits. Through the city dying of thirst and prohibitions moves a chorus of people, young and old, marginalised and successful, victims and profiteers. Their lives are linked in a single design, while each seeks his or her deliverance.

Benno and Allegra: he's over fifty, English, and drinks like a fish; she's twenty years younger, a travel blogger with lots of imagination. They both live off their lies and have no intention of stopping now. Next-door neighbors who had never met until the day he wound up on the wrong landing, and nothing would ever be the same. Sheer chance leads this odd couple on a flight towards lost or forgotten places, where their mutual support makes for self-discovery.

In her public persona, Eleanor “Tussy” Marx was a translator, actress, a children’s rights activist, a feminist and a persuasive labour organizer, a tireless powerhouse determined to carry on her father’s work. She held her own with twentieth century gods, including both her father and his colleague Engels. In her privately life, however, she was vulnerable and her attraction to the self-indulgent and self-important Edward Aveling led her into misery and ultimately proved fatal.

When her social-climbing father is relocated from small-town North to his native Rome, 12-year-old Caterina enrolls to his old school, finding herself in an completely different environment where students rigidly divide themselves in subcultures based on social class and their parents' political affiliation.

Bob is an unassuming office worker and train enthusiast who leads a double life as a schizophrenic and misogynist killer. He teeters on the edge of reality. Television news reports encourage him in ways no one realizes.