“A novel that reads like a movie and photographs reality, always balanced between past and present”. Io Donna
There’s a little darkness hidden in everyone’s heart, and it’s always about to expand and swallow everything, like a screen going black.
1936. Mussolini is in Milan to celebrate the magnificent fortunes of the Italian people and he’s speaking at the inauguration of Palazzo Vittoria, a building erected according to the most modern criteria. A young director, who’s job is to film the ceremony, is soon distracted by a beautiful and restless girl, with whom he’ll end up exploring the immaculate apartments of Palazzo Vittoria. Immaculate except for a blood stain they find near the elevators.
The structure of this novel is simple: that moment from 1936 is just the first of many images that will come to life at Palazzo Vittoria. Once every decade, since then until a near future, the narrator places his gaze on those rooms where new protagonists cross each other’s paths.
Leda, Carlo, Chiara, Luca, Marco, Vittoria: we see them young first, then mature and finally old, their children are born and they resemble their parents, a hundred years of imaginary lives intertwine and then come undone. So it begins, a game of memories, mirrors and projections that make Palazzo Vittoria – a place as real as any – into a dreamlike and revealing scenario. While history runs fast, passions, fears, misunderstandings and loves chase one after the other, in an unpredictable and yet familiar way.
But above all this novel is about a key place of modern life, the apartment building, which becomes the theater of a possible nékyia, the ancient rite meant to bring back to earth the ghosts of the dead: each of them gives us his fragment of public life and of private destiny, they force us to come to terms with the century we come from, and then they leave room for a future where it might still be possible to build something new.
“This is what time does. It takes your blindness and throws it up on you. Every moment, if you look at it afterwards, becomes a little darkness. There is always something you haven’t seen, that you haven’t done. No matter how good your life has been.”
Massimo Coppola
Massimo Coppola is an author, film and documentary writer and director, editorial strategist and creator. As scriptwriter and director, he produced several award-winning documentaries and feature films, including Bianciardi (2007), produced by the Oscar Winning company Indigo Film, and selected for the Venice Film Festival in 2007; Hai paura del buio (2010), Indigo Film, Venice Film Festival; Parafernalia (2008), Locarno Film Festival; Politica zero, Turin Film Festival; and Romeo e Giulietta, opening event at Locarno Film Festival 2015. He has been a host, a writer and a director on several MTV programs and in 2004 he co-founded publishing house Isbn Edizioni, where he was editorial director for ten years. He’s a contributor to many newspapers and magazines and he’s been editor-in-chief at Rolling Stone Italia. He has been editorial, creative and strategic advisor to CEO at Rai (National Public Broadcasting). Un piccolo buio (2019) is his first novel. He has a son and lives in Milan.
“A novel that reads like a movie and photographs reality, always balanced between past and present”. Io Donna