Customer Reviews

The Fugitive

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I read this book on a recent plane trip and found it to be a fascinating examination of the author's years in exile and jail time for a crime he did not commit. Contrary to another reviewer's opinion, I did not find the book to be jumbled or disorganized. The author begins the story with his betrayal by a hired lawyer who was supposed to help him start immigration proceedings in Mexico, where he was then living. The book is not meant to be a chronological approach, but rather deals with the psychological and emotional issues around exile and the Kafka-esque experience of the Italian judicial system of the 70s, 80s, and 90s.

The other review is correct in that the book is quite short.

Since the title of this book is "The Fugitive", it brings to mind a television series from the 1960's which had the same name. that "Fugitive" was a little different; the protagonist was accused of a murder he didn't commit (that of his wife) like the hero of this book, but he was pursued by a very determined policeman who wanted to arrest him and bring him to justice.

The hero of this "the Fugitive" is not pursued by anybody. Through much of the first part of the book he goes into great detail about all the different disguises he used, the characters he played, the tricks that he learned; how to cross borders, how to make telephone calls, get money, how careful you have to be just about every minute , waking and non-waking, of every single day. And he is very good at it. He manages to avoid capture for years. But, in all fairness, this could be because absolutely nobody is looking for him.

I have to say that for me, and maybe this is just me, reading pages and pages of details about how to avoid being caught when nobody in the entire universe is actually pursuing you is just not all that riveting.
Mostly I found myself both feeling sorry for this poor schnook and all the trouble he went to, and also wondering if perhaps he was suffering from some rare form of paranoia; Fugitiphobia.

By the way, the hero was "wanted" nowhere because he was for some reason accused of a murder he was trying to report. I know this from the inside flap of the book. He also belonged to a left wing protest group. That may have had something to do with it, I wouldn't know.
that stuff isn't in the book. He starts at the end and then flashes back to the middle. He never bothers with the beginning.

Of course, it's possible that at the end of the book he goes back to the beginning. I wouldn't know.
I didn't get there. I was reading the book on a bus and there was a guy sitting opposite me who peered over the top of his newspaper and so I jumped out the window of the bus, dodged mid town traffic, changed my name, started acting like a german tourist, and then got on a subway and jumped off at the last minute as the doors were closing (I learned that cool trick from "the Fugitive", so I guess reading the book wasn't a total waste of money). Somewhere along the way I lost the book and I can't buy another copy because I could be apprehended.

Although Carlotto is allegedly a major novelist in Europe, this memoir is disorganized, rambling, and boring. Its only virtue is its brevity. Do not waste your money.