My Life, the Total Disaster: A Novel by Matt

A boy's dreaded chore becomes a cause worth fighting for in an award-winning, heart-lifting, and hilarious novel about friendship, community, and self-discovery.

When disaster-prone twelve-year-old Matt Pesce accidentally sets his neighbor's hedges on fire, his parents sentence him to community service at a senior center. But what help can Matt possibly be to the likes of the General, who's glued to old war documentaries, a pair of elderly chess champions, and the ladies of the knitting club?

While his coolness cred at school may have taken a dive, Matt never guessed he'd light such a spark in the lives of his unlikely new friends. A bonus is a teen volunteer who is, without a doubt, the most beautiful girl Matt has ever seen. But when the bank threatens to close the center, Matt embarks on a mission to save it--with a plan so monumentally brilliant he's trademarked it.

Join the unforgettable Matt in this prize-winning novel from Italy, as he rewrites his story and just maybe finds his place in the world too.

(c) 2020, 2026 by Francesco Muzzopappa, all rights reserved. Translation (c) 2026 by Jamie Richards.

Francesco Muzzopappa is an award-winning Italian author of works for both adults and kids. His children's books include the original edition of this novel, Il Primo Disastroso Libro di Matt, winner of the Selezione Bancarellino Prize, an award voted on by children from all over Italy, and two more titles about the delightful Matt, Il nuovo catastrofico libro di Matt and Pianeta Terra chiama Matt, as well as the novel Wonderbrutto. His earlier works for adults include Una posizione scomoda, Affari di famiglia, and Dente per dente, winner of the Massimo Troisi prize for the best humorous work; these titles have also been published in France. His more recent works include Heidi; the short story collection Un uomo a pezzi; Sarò Breve; Santa Maria; and the Spiegati Male series. In 2023 he received the Guareschi Award for his body of work at the World Humor Awards. He lives on Lake Maggiore.

Jamie Richards is a translator from English into Italian, with occasional forays into other languages. She has translated, among many others, Viola Di Grado, Igiaba Scego, Gipi, and Matteo Bussola, as well as Dolores Prato's Italian classic Giù la piazza non c'è nessuno and Marosia Castaldi's The Hunger of Women, which was long-listed for the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation, short-listed for the Italian Prose in Translation Award, and won the National Translation Award in Prose. She earned her BA in English from Scripps College, with a semester's study at Temple University Rome, and completed an MFA in literary translation at the University of Iowa and a PhD in comparative literature from the University of Oregon. After several years living in Milan, she is currently based in Southern California where she was born and raised.