Current Projects... Forthcoming and In Progress
M. Il figlio del secolo
by
Antonio Scurati
Fourth Estate/HarperCollins, UK and HarperCollins US, In progress
(Bompiani, 2018)
“A New Book About Mussolini Is Provoking a Debate Over His Legacy”https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/08/books/antonio-scurati-mussolini-novel-m.html
Antonio Scurati’s “M.,” a novel about the rise of the dictator, Benito
Mussolini, was on Italian best-seller lists for weeks. “In the Italian
imagination, Mussolini remains a kind of totem, a figure of great charisma, a
kind of perverse national father whom we have repressed,” Scurati said in an
interview. The unexpected popularity of “M” has provoked debate in Italy on
Mussolini’s legacy. Some say the book is a much-needed reminder of the evils of
fascism, particularly for young people. Jonathan Burnham, president and
publisher of the Harper division of HarperCollins called the book “a timely
investigation of how fascism can take root in a society.”
by Paolo
Maurensig
World Editions, In progress
(Einaudi, 2019)
Poised between East and West, between reality and fiction, Il gioco degli dei is
the story of Malik Mir Sultan Khan,
the humble servant who for a brief moment became king.
An American journalist, stationed in Punjab in the mid-sixties, decides to meet
the man whom the gods or chance
endowed with a natural talent at chaturanga, the ancient Indian ancestor of
chess. Brought to the court of a nabob who
helps him perfect his style in the chaturanga, he is introduced to the western
version of the game so that he can humiliate
the British colonialists and show off his victories throughout Europe. A success
on the world stage of chess, his skills
eventually drag Malik into a strange game of warfare that will decide the fate
of the Second World War.
DIVORARE IL CIELO by Paolo Giordano
Pamela Dorman Books/Viking, In progress
(Einaudi, 2018)
Giordano’s latest novel is a book that will not leave anyone indifferent. On the
contrary.
Here too, as in his earlier works, the author has given us sensitively and
compassionately
drawn characters, “imperfect people in extreme situations” as one reviewer once
said
about his work. All in all, another haunting, moving work that will surely
engage readers.
A DEVIL COMES TO TOWN by Paolo Maurensig
Forthcoming from
World Editions, May 2019
(Il diavolo nel cassetto, Einaudi, 2018)
A story within a story within a story, a manuscript found in the drawer of an
aspiring writer,
and a cleric’s tale about events that took place in the Swiss
village of Dichtersruhe (“poet’s repose”),
where Goethe is said to have once spent a night, and
which is now populated with closet writers.
A tale about rabid foxes, the devil
who appears in flesh and blood professing to be a publisher,
the collective
hysteria of the villagers, etc. An absorbing mystery on one level, the book may
also
be read as a wry apologue on vanity and conceit, as well as a fable about
popular superstitions,
such as the atavistic fear inspired by the fox. Like a
rabid fox that exhibits strange behavior,
approaching humans rather than fleeing
from them, the devil, too, plays tricks to get close
to his intended victim.
