“A reckless and enticing match”. Il Venerdì
“Like great storytellers do, Luzzatto accepts and allows to ferment the dual effect produced by the contact with his double”. Il Sole 24 Ore
“It is the rule ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ that governs the rare-book market”. The New York Times about the Girolamini Library case.
“If you love stories, you need to read this”. Il Foglio
“I can’t wait to read Luzzatto’s book, I’m counting down the minutes”. Giampiero Mughini
An engaging Italian criminal case that became an international scandal, revealing the flaws of a subtly corrupted system. A story so incredible – with a protagonist so extreme – that it deserved to be told from start to finish. After Nicholas Schmidle’s 2013 reportage on the New Yorker, historian Sergio Luzzatto dives deeper into the De Caro affair, that is not history yet, but will definitely make it.
In the spring of 2012 Massimo De Caro was arrested for having robbed the ancient Girolamini Library in Naples – a site of great prestige where thousands of manuscripts and printed volumes were preserved for centuries – of which he recently had managed to be appointed director. This episode, which The New York Times reports as “the biggest books scandal to hit in the past 150 or 200 years”, is only the epilogue of an existential parabola that in fifteen years has turned “Max Fox” (the Skype nickname Massimo De Caro chose for himself, after Wall Street’s Bud Fox) an ordinary Italian provincial boy, a lazy student and amateur bibliophile, not only into a serial predator of ancient books, but also in a prodigious forger, capable of fooling the international academic and scientific community, and a reckless fixer, with connections all over the world. However, De Caro’s unique story might not be just about him. It’s also about our time, where truth and honesty are considered to be relative. And it is under the pressure of this civil doubt that Sergio Luzzatto – one of Italy’s most renowned historians and academics – accepts the risk of a “dangerous liaison”. Inspired and guided by the works of Javier Cercas and Emmanuel Carrère, who crossed paths with notorious imposters, he meets with the detainee De Caro, studies his motives, retraces his networks from Argentina to Russia. In fact, what attracts Luzzatto is not only the character, this charismatic anti-hero and international felon, but it’s also and foremost the shadow that present history can cast on the past, the vertigo the author feels as a scholar coming to terms with the dark side of his profession. Combining the analytical gaze of the historian with the passion of the narrator, Luzzatto transforms the story of a man into the novel of an era.
Sergio Luzzatto
Sergio Luzzatto teaches Modern History at the University of Turin. He is the author of Padre Pio: Miracles and Politics in a Secular Age (Metropolitan Books, 2010), which won the prestigious Cundill Prize in History; of The Body of Il Duce: Mussolini’s Corpse and the Fortunes of Italy (Metropolitan Books, 2005), and of Primo Levi’s Resistance. Rebels and Collaborators in Occupied Italy (Metropolitan Books, 2016), published in France by Gallimard (Partigia, 2016) and in Spain by Debate (Partisanos, 2015).
- Max Fox o le relazioni pericolose (Max Fox or Dangerous Liaisons)
- I bambini di Moshe (Moshe’s Children)
- Partigia (Primo Levi’s Resistance)
“A reckless and enticing match.” Il Venerdì
“Like great storytellers do, Luzzatto accepts and allows to ferment the dual effect produced by that the contact with his double”. Il Sole 24 Ore
“It is the rule ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ that governs the rare-book market”. The New York Times about the Girolamini Library case.
“If you love stories, you need to read this”. Il Foglio
“I can’t wait to read Luzzatto’s book, I’m counting down the minutes”. Giampiero Mughini
Foreign publishers of Sergio Luzzatto’s works
France: Gallimard
Spain and Latin America: Debate
US: Metropolitan Books, Picador