Praise for Alessandro Gallenzi’s novels:
“Gallenzi combines his two narratives with engaging skill… this deft and enjoyable novel makes the case for intellectual freedom.” The Scotsman on The Tower
“A fine comic caper and a biting satire on the publishing industry… it is cleverly plotted and lands several juicy thumps on its target.” The Independent on Bestseller
On the road that leads from Milan to Como, for over a century an iron gate has marked the boundary between madness and sanity, between the unchanging world of the mentally ill and the one outside, where people are busy “making history”.
It is 1933, Year XI of the Fascist Era, when Giuseppe crosses the threshold of Mombello’s psychiatric hospital. Left without a home or a family, all he has is the hope that within those walls he might be cured of the “falling sickness” that at times takes over his body without warning. His days are marked by the emptiness of his ward and the hours he spends working in the Director’s office – until he meets a dark-eyed boy of his age who claims to be “Benito Mussolini”, the Duce’s son.
Sectioned against his will in the ward of the “Raving Madmen”, Benito Albino Bernardi, fearing that the nurses are going to poison him, begins to show increasing signs of mental instability, because he knows he will never leave Mombello alive. He is not mad as everyone else in the hospital, he tells the others. But in that living hell all his cries are hopeless and futile.
His only friend, Giuseppe, tries to give him a reason to fight on, and makes it his mission to tell the truth about Benito’s ordeal – a dark, forgotten historical event that Alessandro Gallenzi recreates with vividness in a novel pulsating with suffering and humanity.
Alessandro Gallenzi
Alessandro Gallenzi is a prize-winning translator, a poet and a novelist. He is the founder of Hesperus Press, Alma Books and Alma Classics, and the successor of John Calder at the helm of Calder Publications. His collection of poems, Modern Bestiary – Ars Poetastrica, was published in 2005 to critical acclaim. His satirical literary novel, Bestseller, was published in 2010, followed by InterRail in 2012, The Tower in 2014 and The Lost Son in 2018. His verse translation of Alexander Pope’s The Rape of the Lock won the Premio Biblioteca di Monselice special award in 2010. His articles have appeared in many newspapers and magazines, including The Times, The Scotsman and The London Magazine.
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A selected press review (PDF)