L'ADDIO

A novel of conflict intersected by a searing love story and vertiginous doubts which is also an extreme meditation on the presence of evil and suffering in the world and the possibilities of salvation. A complete adventure, poetic and cognitive, written at a crucial time in the author’s own life. Celebrated fiction editor Antonio Franchini has defined L’Addio as an ‘existential thriller’ and has set his sights on the Premio Strega 2016 for Antonio Moresco.

“My name is D'Arco and I am a dead cop.'' This is the beginning of this incredible novel, both metaphysical and action-packed. The main character is a man filled with pain, gentleness and fury, called to complete an impossible mission. The city of the living and that of the dead are close, adjoining and are very similar to one another. The police force of the living and the police force of the dead are in touch and collaborate when they have to solve the most difficult cases. They have mobile phones that are set up for communication between the living and the dead, and encrypted emails. But there is something else, however, that no one can say: which of the two worlds came first. Now D'Arco has to return to the world of the living, where he was killed, to stop a massacre of innocent victims. But if death really comes before life and evil before good, how can the spiral ever be reversed? D'Arco will try because he is a man who never surrenders, and because he has a formidable guide and ally: a wide-eyed, tight-lipped boy with a shaved head; a creature who no longer has a voice and whose neck is marked by the scar of a barbed wire necklace but who nonetheless has a will formed of an indomitable thirst for justice. A pair of fragile and indestructible heroes, solitary and disillusioned individuals who are prepared to compromise everything they have to defend those who have been humiliated and offended; a man who has thrown away all hope and a voiceless child who can look and see into the future and into the abyss, like those extraordinary children precious to the apologetics of some religious faiths. ANTONIO MORESCO (Mantova, 1947) is one of the most important and original writers of modern Italian fiction. His vast collection of literary fiction, non-fiction and theatrical works includes such highligts as Gli esordi, Canti del caos, and Gli increati.