Nicola Calathopoulos’ new novel is in the bookstores ““Imperfect Witness” (Minerva Editions). The brutal murder of a young girl shocks the major Italian publishing group. Martina Saggesi works at Valerba Editori and witnessed the assassination. She is the super witness that everyone would like to have in cases like this.
Commissioner Farina is convinced of solving the case in a few hours but will have to deal with a much more complex reality. Martina indeed looked the killer in the face, but she cannot remember his face: she suffers from prosopagnosia, a perceptual deficit that prevents those affected from remembering her faces.
Fleeing from her ghosts and from a murderer who, on the contrary, remembers her face perfectly, Martina will not give up giving her contribution to the investigations. Little by little, the investigation takes an unexpected turn, intertwining with another sensational news story that keeps the publishing world in suspense.
A very lucid assassin, always one step ahead; a philosopher commissioner who tries to rationalize what happens to try to live better; the “imperfect” witness and a journalist who will form an unlikely alliance with Farina. In a crazy race, their existence is overwhelmed by a destiny that enjoys putting them to the test in the wicked game of survival.
Only those who are able to become a different person than they were will make it.
“More than a thriller, I like to call it an existential mystery” states the author Nicola Calathopoulos. “Inspector Farina is a kind of Maigret of the twenty-first century. He observes, studies, talks a lot, questions, tries to understand the ins and outs of the personality of those in front of him. The crime that opens the novel is very brutal, crude, the development of the story relies more on the intelligence of the protagonists than on the state of tension in which the reader is made to live.”
In his previous novel – Damned forever (Edizioni Minerva) – among the protagonists we find a misanthrope and a serial hoarder, here the protagonist suffers from prosopagnosia: “I enjoy discovering the uniqueness, the singularity of each one. – continues the author. “Why does someone suddenly feel the need to fill their house with so many objects that they become buried in them? What does he feel? What is his peculiarity that pushes him to be like this? This drives me crazy, I like trying to dig. How do you live in a world without faces? Where, looking in the mirror, we are not even able to recognize ourselves. These are not imperfect people, we all are, but special. And that’s what I’m looking for.”
What is prosopagnosia
Prosopagnosia is a perceptual deficit that prevents those affected from remembering faces. In Italy it is estimated that around one and a half million people suffer from prosopagnosia. The most illustrious patient in the world is Brad Pitt who talks about his illness without problems. Many doctors struggle to recognize this pathology, which can be innate or acquired, mistaking it for forms of autism. Those who suffer from it are unable, in the most severe forms, to recognize their own face in the mirror. There is no cure, those with prosopagnosia implement a series of measures to be able to live in a world without faces: pay attention to the particular signs of people, the way they dress, move, their voice, the color of their hair. Tricks to try to recognize who is in front of you, who you know very well but it’s as if you were seeing them for the first time.
Nicholas Calathopoulos (Alexandria, Egypt, 17 October 1960), journalist, graduated in Philosophy from the University of Milan, was deputy director of “Sportmediaset”, “Tg4”, “NewsMediaset” and “Tgcom24”. He won the Coni-Ussi journalistic award and the “Maestrelli”. He currently writes the weekly column for Mediaset E-Planet and is among the authors of the series, between sport and crime, Dirty game broadcast on Italia1. His first novel Damned Forever (Edizioni Minerva) was a finalist at the City of Como International Literature Prize 2021, Special Prize at the I Sassi di Matera Literary Prize 2021 and received the Special Mention at the Casino di Sanremo-Antonio Semeria International Literary Prize.
