Fabio Geda is an Italian novelist who works with children who are under duress. He writes for several Italian magazines and newspapers and teaches creative writing at Scuola Holden, the Italian school of storytelling in Turin. This is his first book to be translated into English.

Enaiatollah Akbari graduated from high school in the spring of 2011 and plans to attend university in Italy while continuing to support his mother and siblings, who are now living in Pakistan. He dreams of having the chance to return one day to a democratic and peaceful Afghanistan.

Howard Curtis is a London-based translator of Italian and French texts, for which he has won numerous awards, including the John Florio Prize for Italian Translation. He was short-listed for the 2010 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize.