Il pronipote di Salgari

‘Look, Federico Caffè’s house is on that street, Aldo Moro’s first hideout is on that one, and over there is the villa where Mahatma Gandhi slept. In that monastery, they keep the left hand of Saint Catherine of Siena.’ Giovanni would rather be our guide through the streets of his neighbourhood than write a screenplay, edit a novel, read a book to review, in short, do his job. In reality, what he dreams of doing is writing a book about Salgari, about a family that seems to be struck by a curse: his uncle, his father, Emilio himself and two of his children have all committed suicide. Beneath the pirate adventures in an imagined Malaysia in a house in Turin lies a dark and ancient evil that becomes an obsession for Giovanni. This leads him to try to contact Romero Salgari Junior, the great writer’s great-grandson, who in 1984 stabbed to death Lucia Valsania, a retired postwoman from the village in the Roero where they both lived. Through daily conversations with his father, who is as passionate about Salgari as he is, and exhausting research in libraries and elsewhere, we accompany the protagonist on a literary investigation that resembles an inner journey of light and shadow, revealing the contradictions that often coexist in the human soul.