Customer Reviews

Darkness: Fiction (Italia Series)

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Short stories on the worst Rome has to offer. A little boy gets raped and killed. Two Albanian teenagers sold into Italian Prostitution. In Africa, a nun is raped by Muslim bandits. We get inside an insane asylum, hear about the abuse by a father, and ever so much more. In all the stories we see Police Commissioner Adele Sofia at work, at times helped by Inspector Marra.

The stories are devastating because they ring so true. The author writes straight forward, not losing any time on asides or descriptions. Brute crimes, basic language.

With sharp, incisive prose, Maraini examines the unsweetened, bitter realities of life in Italia. These loosely interconnected stories are culled from actual newspaper crime reports. She adroitly imbues the facts with spirit, as she delves into psychological motivation and characteristics of the many and varied victims and perpetrators. These portraits reveal the predatory nature inherent in humanity and the vulnerabilities and exploitation of the weak. A dog-eat-dog philosophy reigns supreme in this vision of our post-modern world.