Without Blood

Copyright

Vintage Books

A Division of Random House, Inc.

New York

FIRST VINTAGE INTERNATIONAL EDITION, MARCH 2008

Translation copyright © 2004 by Alessandro Baricco

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. Originally published in Italy as Senza sangue by Rizzoli, Milan, in 2002. Copyright © 2002

RCS Libri S.p.A., Milano. This translation originally published in hardcover in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, in 2004.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Vintage is a registered trademark and Vintage International and Colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

The Library of Congress has cataloged the Knopf edition as follows: Baricco, Alessandro [date]

[Senza sangue. English]

Without blood / Alessandro Baricco ; translated from the Italian by Ann Goldstein—1st American ed.

p. cm.

I. Goldstein, Ann, 1949– . II. Title.

PQ4862.A6745S4513 2004 853’.914—dc22 2003058917

eISBN: 978-0-307-38936-7

Book design by Johanna Roebas

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The events and persons mentioned in this story are imagi-nary. The frequent choice of Spanish names is due purely to their music and is not intended to suggest a historic or geographical location of the action.