On Thursday 27th May, at 6pm, Paolo Moretti will present his new book at Ubik in Varese, Blood and mud: an investigative novel that tells the story of the Erba massacre from an original point of view, that of Pietro Castagna, who was the victims’ brother, son and uncle. And that in recent times he has entered the grip of the media tribunal of the innocentist current, because he has been indicated as a new possible culprit. The book discreetly follows his step, before and after the trauma of the loss, discovers the dark sides and the violence of the media invasion, the depression, the treatments, and the desire to continue living, despite everything.
At the bookstore in Piazza Podestà, Manuela Lozza, councilor and president of the Culture Commission of the Municipality of Varese, will be there to talk with the author.
Paolo Moretti, writer and judicial reporter, has followed the Erba story since the evening of December 11, 2006, the day on which the atrocious crime, perhaps the most discussed crime case, took place in the court in Via Diaz. of the last twenty years. Considered one of the leading experts on the case, through a rigorous reading of the documents, Moretti affirms a solid alternative to the innocentist version which, over the years, has seen reporters and journalists, real or presumed, attempting to clean up the image of the Romano couple, sentenced to life imprisonment as guilty of murder.
In addition to reconstructing the extremely complicated puzzle of the crime and establishing the cornerstones of a long judicial history, Moretti’s work gives the reader an aspect that has always been underestimated by the press, television and other media: the intimate story of human beings, the survivors, forced to bear the weight of the “after”. And he points the lens into the hidden corners of hospital rooms, clinics, prisons, police stations and courts, far from the spotlights in which this crime took place. Black Mirror infinite and bloody, trying to answer a shocking and very difficult question: after the blood of the massacre, after so much media mud, how can one find the strength to move forward?
The procedural documents, the people who actually existed, the facts that actually happened: all journalistic material is pigeonholed within a dramaturgical structure that makes Blood and Mud an investigative book with a narrative slant; a crime story full of tension, a shocking family tragedy and, above all, a moving novel about the need for redemption of a cornered man.
Blood and Mud is the first publication of Docu, a new editorial brand from Dominioni Editore which collects truth novels by Italian writers and journalists.
The focus is on the lives of others and on themes related to current events and history, but adapting the gaze to the events of ordinary people.
The author
Paolo Moretti (Como, 1971) took his first steps as a reporter at Radio Popolare.
He was a correspondent for the “Corriere della Sera” for over eleven years before arriving at the newspaper “La Provincia” as a judicial expert. He has written novels and essays on the topic of organized crime. He followed all phases of the Erba massacre: from the evening of the murders to all levels of trial. He wrote with his colleague Stefano Ferrari The Thirty Steps – the true story of the massacre and is the author of the podcast for “La Provincia”, with Martina Toppi Black souls.
