The Foundation recommends

The astrakhan coat

A nameless protagonist tells the story of his life in post-war Paris in the first person. Drawn to France and its capital, seen as a Mecca to which every man should make a pilgrimage in his life, the forty-year-old from Luino, on Lake Maggiore, goes to the shadow of the Eiffel Tower without a specific plan, seeking opportunities to change his life or at least adventures to tell people about when he returns to Italy. The man manages to convince a widow, Mrs. Lenormand, to rent him a room in her house, but he has to share it with the cat Domitien, who has no intention of leaving the room. The woman, at first hesitant and shy, gradually begins to get used to his presence and relates to him episodes of her life and that of her son Maurice who appears to have abandoned her to go and live in Indochina. The resemblance between Maurice and the young Italian, both physical and in terms of affinity of soul, strikes Mrs. Lenormand to the point that during the winter she decides to give him some of her son's clothes, including an Astrakhan coat, in the style of the Russian fashion at the time of the Tsars. At the same time, the protagonist begins to date a girl named Valentine, but one day she gets upset when she sees him wearing the coat, which reminds her of the one that belonged to a past love of hers. Piero Chiara writes a novel with a European feel. Despite starting from the places close to his heart, where most of his novels are set, it moves to the French capital, where the protagonist, perhaps partly an autobiographical character, tries to find a broader horizon than that of the quiet Italian province. The author also retraces the places of his life on the pages of the Pirelli Magazine, in which he publishes two articles: “La sponda magra” (The lean shore) in 1952, in which he describes a spring trip on the shores of Lake Maggiore, and “Valsolda piccolo mondo” (Valsolda small world) in 1962, in which he tells of a visit to the Lombard valley between Lakes Como and Lugano, following in the footsteps of Antonio Fogazzaro.  

Il cappotto di astrakan
Piero Chiara
Mondadori, 1978

The King in Yellow

A cursed book, which unleashes madness in those who read it and spreads like a pestilence, despite attempts at censorship. The protagonist is the King in Yellow, dressed in rags, who reigns over the dark city of Carcosa, over which twin suns shine. This fictional theatrical work is the leitmotif of the first four stories that make up the "real" book, "Il Re Giallo" by Robert W. Chambers, an author who has renewed the Gothic genre and laid the foundations for twentieth-century horror literature, starting with Howard Phillips Lovecraft who recognises his influence in particular for the invention of the "Necronomicon". In more recent times, the book has also been the source of inspiration for the first season of the famous TV series "True detective", written by Nic Pizzolatto, whose success led to the printing of new editions of the collection, forgotten for many years. The work is a collection of ten stories set between America and Paris in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (a futuristic twentieth century since the work was published in 1895), dreamlike and macabre stories that speak of homicidal impulses, mysterious prophecies, disturbing dreams, love affairs and wars. Cosmic horrors and existential fears, capable of making even the contemporary reader shudder, more than a hundred years later.   Il Re Giallo (The King in Yellow) Robert W. Chambers Vallardi, 2014

The Fade Out

Hollywood in the late 1940s. The golden age of the noir genre, in print and on the silver screen. Charlie Parish is a screenwriter struggling with his inner ghosts; he is suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome after his return from the battlefields of World War II. After a party, Charlie wakes up in a room and finds the lifeless body of Valeria Sommers, a great film diva and his friend. He had been drunk the night before and cannot remember what happened. The affair haunts him and he decides to investigate, digging deeper and deeper into a world that hides a myriad of murky secrets behind the glossy image of a 'dream factory’. Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips return to revisit the noir genre (after the beautiful Criminal and Sleeper), taking inspiration from literary masters such as Raymond Chandler and James Ellroy and films such as Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard. Phillips' digital drawings masterfully render the dark atmosphere of the story, with excellent use of black that seems to envelop the characters. The comic book is also full of quotations and references to the world of cinema, which begin as early as the title (Fade Out in English), with which each story in the miniseries opens.  

Dissolvenza a nero (The Fade Out)
Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips
Panini comics, 2018

Small fry

In Alessandro Robecchi's latest novel, 'Pesci piccoli', we again come across Carlo Monterossi, the TV author and detective who started the successful saga, recently adapted for TV in the series 'Monterossi', produced by Palomar. His co-stars, to whom readers have grown attached over the years, are also back and in this new adventure they find themselves dealing with unimportant characters: the marginalised people of a Milan that is increasingly becoming a city for the rich. The small fry. They are not experienced criminals with organised plans and the ability to earn a fortune, but ordinary people who often struggle to survive as they balance low wages and pressing expenses. People who, when they find an opportunity to earn something, take it in the hope of improving their lives, but then get caught up in situations that are bigger than themselves. We also meet with Ghezzi and Carella again, the policemen who work through the petty cases left on their desks, mostly petty crimes committed by poor people living on the streets; and we find the two investigators from Sistemi Integrati, Oscar Falcone and Agatina Cirielli, who, together with Carlo, attempt to investigate a theft that cannot be reported to the police. Finally, of course, we have the colourful Flora De Pisis, the queen of junk TV always ready to dig up some dirt, who is preparing to be in an episode of 'Crazy Love' dedicated to a priest who is not a priest and a miraculous crucifix, which are found in a small village in the Milanese hinterland where a crowd of believers gather. A bitter noir novel that, as we are used to seeing in Robecchi’s novels, continues to describe a city full of contradictions, made up of glittering lights but also dark shadows, in which 'you need a lot of losers to keep the myth of the winning city alive'.  

Pesci piccoli (Small fry)
Alessandro Robecchi
Sellerio, 2024