Pietà

The parties in the running to govern this anonymous town in Southern Italy have strange names: there is the tried-and-true secondhand phrase “Melting Pot of the Outgoing and the Former-Oppositionists”; there is “Home Sweet Home”, that wants to change the status quo; there is the affected vagueness of the “Local Delegation of a National Power”; and lastly, the xenophobic haters of “Against-Riace”. During the frenetic days of the electoral campaign, a fierce battle breaks out among these various ragtag armies, no holds barred, a dangerous game in which the public good splits apart into private, personal advantage.
The book presents grotesque scenes, love stories and betrayals, many characters with their lives and their muddles. A visionary former inventor, a female prophet of racial hate, a priest, and a plethora of politicos endowed with many interests but few ideas…
The result is a highly clear-eyed and entertaining analysis of power that investigates the subtle mechanisms of persuasion, recounts the waltz of compromises, the tentacles of crime, and the adulterations of public affairs.
Antonio Galetta observes the infinite pettiness of the provinces as though he were looking at a diorama or a scale model, but actually, what he is doing is talking about all of us, our way of being political animals. With an affecting urgency and the vitality of great literature, he tosses us into the world and tells us that the world is grotesque, harsh, cannibalistic, perverse, desperate. But at the same time, his book is a prayer. The prayer of a 26-year-old.