Broken Truths

Le verità spezzate is Alessandro Robecchi’s latest novel, published by Rizzoli. The title is also to be that of the best-known film about its protagonist, Manlio Parrini, a seventy-year-old director embarking on a new project after years away from cinema. The film he hopes to make, for which he is seeking a producer, is a true story based on the life of Augusto De Angelis, an Italian crime writer in the 1930s, who was violently killed under mysterious circumstances, suggesting a link to fascist squads. Parrini is drawn to this important mystery—the story of a free-thinking man whose life likely ended for political reasons, suppressed by the regime’s heavy-handed censorship. While Parrini is still scripting the film, a new mystery breaks into his life: the murder of his neighbour, the widow Bastioni, a case that echoes the dark tales in De Angelis’s crime novels. Here we have a double investigation into past and present mysteries that bring up themes of freedom and influence, narrated with Robecchi’s characteristic wit and lightness of touch. Le verità spezzate Alessandro Robecchi Rizzoli, 2024