Dreams for Rent

Milan is the city of dreams. But for Paolo and Roberta, like an entire generation, even dreams come with a monthly rent.

Two young people from the South move north, certain that hard work and sacrifice are enough to build a future. He produces live television; she gave up her dream of teaching for something more secure. They both work, they get by, they love each other. And yet, one rejection at a time, they discover it isn't enough: rent swallows their paychecks, banks close their doors to anyone without a permanent contract, and the home they dreamed of always belongs to someone else.

When an old university friend - the one who seemed to have made it - pulls them into a truth no one wants to see, Paolo and Roberta are forced to ask what "making it" really means. And whether the life they dreamed of was ever the one they could actually afford.

A contemporary social novel, intimate and unflinching, about precarity, love that holds on, and the courage to redefine the word "home." The story of people who, in a city that shows no mercy, keep trying anyway.

• A literary novel of financial precarity and generational struggle
• Set in contemporary Milan, Italy
• For readers of coming-of-age and social realist fiction
• A story about love, work, and what "home" really means