We are in Milan, the most important and cosmopolitan Italian city. It is the city of Alice, the main character of The Last Apple. Alice is 15 years old and attends the first class of a prestigious high school, the Parini. Her family background has always been complicated, wavering among the constant quarrels of her parents and the upsetting mystery that surrounds the life of her grandmother, whom she has never met, and has been never spoken of in the house. Alice also has or rather had, a boyfriend, Federico, with whom she used to spend the holidays at the seaside or in the mountains and entire afternoons together. Yet, he suddenly leaves her, without a word. And so does her father Giulio, who walks out with no explanations, abandoning her in a state of sadness mixed with anger. As a result, Alice becomes irritable, listless at school, rude and malicious to her mother. Someone, however, is interested in her: Armando, a high school student who woos her and, unintentionally, nudges her towards a personal and autonomous path of clarification with herself and with the members of her family: her mother, her father and her aunt Giselda, a social worker. It is Armando who tells her about a terrible act of violence committed on a young woman who, according to the papers, was savagely beaten by her father. However, a news blackout follows. Someone wants to censor yet another incident, but not Alice who persists in looking for the girl. She calls every hospital in town and eventually tracks her down. Thus, she steps into Sabrina’s life, which is a real riddle abounding with unconventional figures. A roommate who offers her apples which are probably poisoned, a big curly guy who watches over her and refuses to talk to anyone, a tight-lipped head nurse, someone called Sergio who keeps telling suspicious anecdotes. But what has really happened to Sabrina? The anxiety to share with her a past burdened with violence, deception, lies and neglection, does not stop Alice from looking for the truth. Her battle is so resolute that ends up involving Armando, alarming her aunt who decides to clarify the family's turbulent past, and planning to meet with her father. Among failures, discussions, reconciliations, school events and new friendships, emerges the story of her grandmother's involvement in the student movements of the late ‘60s, which had dramatic implications. But what really matters to Alice is to recover her serenity and the desire to fight for a more equal, fair and responsible world. And in the end, she will succeed. Thanks to the smooth flow of the writing and the brisk dialogue that enhances Alice’s pungent irony, the novel transports us, with a bit of suspense and a lot of choral accounts, in the difficult path of the growth of a teenager who wants to fight the perverse seed of violence, always and everywhere.