About Time (Bastardi senza amore) is a mystery romance for our age, in which Time plays a high-stakes game with the soul of a rich, handsome and ruthless banker.

Svevo Romano is every woman's dream turned nightmare. Irresistibly handsome, saturated with money and at the peak of his career, he is also a ruthless workaholic by day and a drug-taking playboy by night: haunting the trendiest clubs in Rome, relentlessly chasing casual sex and snorting cocaine, and all the while trying to overcome a nagging feeling of meaninglessness.

Suddenly, one day, everything changes. As Svevo boards a plane, time mysteriously speeds up, but only for him. Finding himself in a race against time and life itself, he desperately tries to keep up with his colleagues and friends, and to hold on to all the things that he once thought were important. But from the most unexpected of quarters, just as everything threatens to spiral completely out of control, Svevo's life acquires a meaning that reaches beyond time and space.

In this suspenseful, funny and sensual novel, one of Italy's most talented young writers explores the frenzy of the modern world and demonstrates how time spent without love is time wasted.

"Intense, and brilliant"
- Grazia Italy

Translated by Howard Curtis, About Time (Bastardi senza amore) is the first book by Sparaco published by Pushkin Press.

Simona Sparaco was born in Rome and wrote her first story at the age of twelve. Since then she has studied screenwriting, and currently writes for Italian television. Her first novel, Lovebook, a love story for the Facebook generation, was published in 2009.

Translated by: Howard Curtis