Gérard de Nerval – The Tale of Caliph Hakim
Joy and revolution
An extremely fascinating long story, which mixes Christian culture and “The Arabian Nights” into a crucible of familiar references while avoiding sterility...
Robert Graves – The Scream (The Shout)
Anguish of the Absolute
A mysterious and spooky man falls into the life of a young couple and upsets their existences.
Short and striking novel that,...
Giuseppe Berto – Blackshirt War (Guerra in camicia nera)
On the Side of those Who Believed
An almost forgotten book from an author who should be reconsidered, it’s the war journal of a young...
Julien Gracq – In Argol Castle (Chateau d’Argol)
The Ivory Tower of Gracq
Presumptuous as few, Gracq describes a ménage a trois, often sublimated by the symbolic world, without ever writing a single...
Ross MacDonald – The Chill
Those Little Bourgeois
A guncotton thriller, with a gallery of cleverly staged characters and a rhythm that manages to captivate from beginning to end despite...
Howard Roughan – The Up and Comer
Topical Entertainment
Cynical and rampant Philip Randall, a young New York lawyer, is trapped in the mesh of his own and others' opportunism.
Beyond the final...
Ambrose Bierce – The Monk And The Hangman’s Daughter
Damages of Religious Manichaeism
Bierce gives the best of himself in this short novel presented as the diary of a novice who, despite his religion,...
Alessandro Perissinotto – Sowing the Wind (Semina il vento)
Even in Vercelli Wolves Kill
A love-and-death story between an Italian teacher from the Piedmont region and a young Iranian-born French woman. After their move...
Carlo Cassola – Local Railroad
Watercolor railroad
Marked by the rattle of trains, Cassola outlines fragments of choral daily life of families and landscapes crossed by the local railroad tracks....
Elif Shafak – 10 Minutes 38 seconds in this strange world
This book was a contender for the Booker Prize 2019, and IMO it should have won. The story is genius, it begins with the...