Anna Maria Ortese

Anna Maria Ortese returns to Naples, a city from which she has been absent for many years. Officially, she was commissioned to interview young Neapolitan writers, some already renowned, others destined to become so: Prisco, Rea, Incoronato, and La Capria. A long chapter recounts, precisely, her visits to these authors, and we come to understand how the city’s immediate postwar cultural and polit

The novel revolves around a question to which the reader cannot find an exhaustive answer: who is the "Cardillo Addolorato", and what role does this omnipresent and obscure figure play among so many characters? And what is the meaning of the verses that recur throughout the tale, up to its seemingly tragic conclusion: «e vola vola vola lu Cardillo! e vola vola vola... oh! oh!»? To answer, one mus