Don't Move - Margaret Mazzantini

Written in the first person, Don't Mess With Me is a poignant monologue of a man, a surgeon, speaking to his fifteen-year-old daughter. After a motorcycle accident, she is taken to the same hospital where her father works. Now, in a room adjacent to the operating block, he waits while a friend operates on her brain. She is seriously injured and may die. While waiting, petrified by terror and pain, he begins an internal dialogue with his daughter, revealing his most intimate secret. Suddenly, the respected professional, the tepid husband of a brilliant and beautiful journalist, the distracted father of a teenager like so many others, is forced to lay bare, before his daughter and himself, a long-concealed truth. Many years ago, the surgeon violated a woman, a wretched immigrant who lived in one of the city's most degraded areas. From this episode, the strangest of love stories unfolds, as he falls hopelessly in love with this poor, unattractive, uneducated woman, and begins to live his "real life" with her. Until a tragic event changes everything.