Customer Reviews

The Past Is a Foreign Country: A Thriller

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In the Apulia boot region of Italy, a serial rapist rocks the city of Bari. No woman feels safe as the police led by Lieutenant Chiti struggle to apprehend the culprit. Making no progress disturbs Chiti who cannot eat or sleep properly.

Hard studying diligent law student Giorgio Cipriani meets gust for life philosophy student Francesco Carducci. They become friends; albeit a seemingly odd couple. However, rather quickly Giorgio ignores his studies joining his new buddy in cheating other players out of large sums of money playing poker. They also share drugs and alcohol, and have one night stands that are often violent with a myriad of women. The duo leaves Bari for Spain; while Chiti continues to lose sleep over the serial rapes.

This is a tense psychological suspense that focuses on three people. Chiti feels like a failure unable to prevent the serial rapist from finding victims; Giorgio wonders how he fell so far from grace as he gave up and betrayed all his friends for the hedonistic zest for life that charismatic Francesco displays. However, Francesco is the fascinating one as a sort of Peter Pan with a destructive vent. The Past Is A Foreign Country is a taut tale that grips the audience from the moment the two students meet and go on their frenzy.

Harriet Klausner

Excellent Italian thriller focusing on Giorgio, a naive law student in Bari, his new friend Francesco, a mysterious card shark and amateur magician, and carabinieri Lieutenant Chiti, who is investigating a serial rapist. Fast paced, interesting characters, good plot. Highly recommended.

In "The Past Is A Foreign Country" Gianrico Carofiglio leaves his battle proven defense attorney Guido Guerrieri and travels from court drama to a new territory: a Paul Austerish fable about seduction and the dark forces of the human soul, salted with a pinch of suspense thriller. The trouble is, it doesn't work. Not only is the plot lame and shallow, it is also utterly predictable. The Whodunnit could be solved by a three year old (there is one bad guy in the story, so who do you think committed the crimes?), and the novel lacks any psychological insight into the pathological mind at the center of the story and its first person narrator (we never learn nor understand why he falls for his seducer). Roughly knit with the yarn of a Paul Auster novel, it has nothing of the haunting, fate driven, magical, otherworldly atmosphere that still makes Auster such a fascinating read.
In Carafiglio's previous novels about defense attorney Guido Guerrieri he had created a complex and beautiful protagonist fighting for justice in an unjust society. Returning to Guerrieri, Carofiglio would not only do his readers a favor, but also himself.

During the late eighties, Giorgio Cipriani is a twenty-two-year-old law student in Bari, Italy. He develops an unlikely friendship with the ne'er-do-well Francesco Carducci who is a philosophy major. The suave, handsome Francesco quickly seduces Giorgio into a glamorous, sensual life of crime. Together, they play poker and swindle their opponents out of small fortunes. Eventually, Giorgio forsakes law school and his obsession with Francesco causes him to descend into the depraved depths of cocaine trafficking and sexual perversion. Meanwhile, Lieutenant Chiti, the head of a task force, is trying to identify a serial rapist who is terrorizing Bari.

With friends like Francesco, who needs enemies? Someone should've taught Giorgio to be more careful in choosing his friends. Indeed, friendship, specifically how far we will go to protect our friends, seems to be a prevalent theme throughout Gianrico Carofiglio's beautifully written psychological crime drama, "The Past is a Foreign Country." Most of the novel is told in the first person from Giorgio's point of view. As a child, he loved to write; currently, he is writing about events taking place many years in the past. Once he read a novel titled "The Foreign Student;" on the page before its prologue was the following quotation: "The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there." Giorgio's life was much different during that turbulent year when he was friends with Francesco.

Francesco Carducci is a human chameleon with a high IQ. He can blend into any type of environment; he is able to easily make friends with people from all walks of life. With his incredibly handsome looks, he can seduce practically any woman. Happiness, however, eludes him. Having been raised poor in a broken home, he feels that he never has enough money. Giorgio is probably the first true friend he has ever trusted, which is evidenced by his willingness to teach him his card tricks. Soon Giorgio is nearly as good a card shark as Francesco.

Giorgio Cipriani knows how to fight and is a brave man. Though not wealthy, he was raised in an upper middle class family. Giorgio respects the laws; the moral values instilled in him prevents him from becoming another Francesco. The reader might consider Giorgio and Francesco as opposites. I believe that Giorgio, yearning for a break from his highly structured, regimented life, envied and craved Francesco's glamorously risqué lifestyle. I was sometimes left wondering if Francesco was lonely for true friendship or merely manipulating Giorgio, using him as a pawn for his future plans of crime.

Some of the novel is told from the viewpoint of Lieutenant Giorgio Chiti of the Carabinieri (an Italian military corps with police duties). He had a tragic childhood that is similar to that of Francesco. However, Lieutenant Chiti learned to overcome the nightmares of his past. A great leader like Francesco, he commands a task force to identify and locate the phantom rapist. He is also a talented artist. From a description provided by a victim`s friend, he is able to sketch a portrait of a suspect. Both Giorgio Cipriani and Lieutenant Giorgio Chiti are involved with law, having followed in the footsteps of their respective fathers.

Bari, Southern Italy, with its beautiful beaches, cafes and villas, provides a wonderful setting for "The Past is a Foreign Country." Located at the heel of the boot-shaped country, this port city is rich with history. Besides having a flourishing fishing industry, its agricultural industry includes cherries, tomatoes, artichokes, grapes and table wine. "The Past is a Foreign Country" was originally written in Italian by Gianrico Carofiglio, a former anti-Mafia prosecutor based in Bari. Having sold over 400,000 copies worldwide, it has been translated into numerous languages. Howard Cutis has done a superb job of translating this psychological crime drama into English. I would never have known that it was a translation. I was confused only once when the point of view changed from Giorgio Cipriani to Giorgio Chiti and I had forgotten that the lieutenant had the same first name as the law student.

"The Past is a Foreign Country" proves that your friends and associates can get you into serious trouble. Bad choices that seem innocent at first can cause a chain reaction of events that can quickly become deadly. You can never return to the past and amend the damage that has been done. "The Past is a Foreign Country" is highly recommended reading for those who love good crime drama with exotic locales. Other novels that involve twisted friendships that lead to disastrous consequences are David J. Schow's "Internecine," Neil Cross' "Burial," Wallace Stroby's "Gone `Til November" and Daniel Judson's "The Violet Hour."


Joseph B. Hoyos

The evil one does lives long after him. Or does it? That is the gist of this extraordinary tale about Giorgio, a young man studying to be a lawyer in a small Italian city who is drawn into a relationship with a person with few or no morals.

That person, Francesco, teaches him various card tricks and together they begin to play poker as a team, winning substantial sums. Consequently, Giorgio begins to lose interest in his studies as large amount of sums begin to accumulate and he has the wherewithal to buy luxuries, including a BMW automobile. Then little by little, Francesco lures him into other nefarious schemes.

Meanwhile, a serial rapist is active in the town, and the police and other law enforcement agencies are baffled and without a clue. In the end, both elements of the plot come together to provide a moral. While the insights into Giorgio's character and reactions are less than penetrating, the writing is smooth and on the whole this is a fascinating story, and one which is recommended.

This novel, translated from Italian, is a tough one to grab hold of or to describe. Two stories are happening simultaneously: a third-person narrative in which the Barese (Italy) police are seeking a man who assaults women, and a first-person narrative of a law student who finds himself unexpectedly part of the underworld when a card shark takes him under his wing and makes him (the student) his protege.

On the one hand, I can say that I looked forward to picking this book up each night. I'm not sure how to evaluate a translation from another language that I don't speak, but this one seemed to capture nuance very well. I enjoyed the look at the playboy underworld of Italian/European gamblers and grifters, and I thought the story moved quickly.

On the other hand, though, there really isn't much of a story; the psychological underpinnings of both the hero (Giorgio) and anti-hero (Francesco) aren't explored in enough detail to make me understand what drives each of them. Perhaps in the case of Giorgio, the cause is young adult angst, but this is more something I put onto the book than a feeling the book gave me. The author also has made the very odd decision to name two main characters Giorgio (both the police inspector and the law student), which leads to a bit of confusion and a sense that there is going to be some sort of interesting revelation about the two men (which never happens).

For me this is one of those in-between books: While I liked reading it for the most part, I know I'll forget it quickly. While I wouldn't recommend it enthusiastically to a friend, I also would not say "NO! Don't read it! You'll regret it!" I was left with a feeling of a book with potential that didn't quite fire on all cylinders.