Rome, 7 May 2024 – “Doesn’t constant contact with the ugliness out there, with evil, make us understand how wonderful tenderness and love are?” he asks Octavia in the thirteenth chapter of the Bastards of Pizzofalcone. Pioggia comes out today by Einaudi, after three years of waiting for the beloved’s previous book noir series signed by Maurizio De Giovanni. The author will talk about it on Saturday at the Turin Book Fair.
“We tend to say that contact with evil makes us cynical; as if, in defense, we become less sensitive. In my opinion this is not the case. By contrast, on the contrary, we are better able to appreciate and recognize beauty. I believe this happens to sensitive people ” says De Giovanni, offering a glimmer of light in the darkness of these times.
Once again, the Neapolitan writer is preparing to conquer readers with his remarkable ability to describe the chiaroscuro of existence, plumbing the depths of the human soul with his unmistakable style made of rhythm and poetry, Neapolitan intensity and lightness.
When he wrote the first chapter of Bastardsin 2012, did you imagine that they would have such a long life?
“Absolutely not. After five years of Ricciardi (commissioner protagonist of his first novels set in Naples in the 1930s, ed.), I wanted to test my ability to interpret contemporary reality. But I had no idea of starting a series. Then The Method of the Crocodile, which won the Scerbanenco Prize, made me curious to find out what else would happen to Inspector Lojacono, taking Ed McBain’s 87th District as a model – one of my favorite reads – I tried to set one in Naples. There weren’t many in Italian noir literature at the time. It’s fun and I’m always happy to find my Bastards again.”
What has changed since then?
“My approach to the characters. Before I looked at them from the outside. Today I follow them more from within, I get to the heart of each one; this allows me to reveal their imperfections. I really believe in the fact that literature is the story of the injuries of each we”.
How much, however, have your characters changed you?
“Very much. They taught me not to stop at appearances and evaluate the world around me not only with a different look but also with a different attention. There is a constant osmosis between the life I live and the one I describe in my novels” .
Naples remains the epicenter of his stories…
“This city has always been a social laboratory. A small area in which three and a half million inhabitants live, in constant contact with each other. The different social classes coexist and speak the same language. This generates stories, what else they are nothing but the story of contrasts, of conflicts”.
Almost all the protagonists of his books now have a television face. How does this association live?
“I have been very lucky with the actors chosen for the various dramas and I am happy that my characters have entered the collective imagination in this way. But I continue to see them with the faces with which I knew them; for me Lojacono remains different from Alessandro Gassmann “.
He has proven to be a prolific writer and his readers always expect sequels from his novels. Who decrees the end of the series?
“Those who tell stories do so to be listened to, so I’m happy when the series is so popular that it becomes difficult to put them down. But in the end the characters decide. When they stop telling me stories, I’ll stop writing them. I’ll never be aggressively therapeutic towards them” , comments De Giovanni with a smile.
