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Angelo Di Carlo was 54 and hopelessly unemployed when he took his life by setting himself on fire in front of the Italian Parliament on August 11th 2012. It was summer and the press ran very succinct reports of this terrible death. Who was Angelo “Sgargy” Di Carlo, “the Green Jan Palach”, as he was dubbed? Why this way to exit life? Giomaria Bellu tells this true story with the pace and passion of a novelist, propelled by being the same age as Sgargy: they were both children of the Moon, just kids when manset foot on our satellite, born in an age of hope and great expectations. What happened then? A novel built on interviews and meetings with family friends, travels in provincial Italy, visits to former homes, following the footprints of a man who chose to be faithful to his ideals and then lost faith. The portrait of a man and of a time when everything seemed possible and then was not.


Giovanni Maria Bellu was born in Cagliari, he is a journalist and a novelist. He worked for “la Repubblica”, was coeditor at “L’Unità”, editor at “Left”, “Sardegna 24” and “Sardinia Post”.

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