The City of the Living

From the winner of the Strega Prize, a spellbinding investigation of one of the most vicious crimes in recent Italian history and a journey into the darkest corners of Rome and of the human soul.

In March 2016, in a nondescript apartment on the outskirts of Rome, Manuel Foffo and Marco Prato, two "ordinary" young men from good families, brutally murdered twenty-three year old Luca Varani after torturing him for hours. News of the seemingly inexplicable crime sent shockwaves across Rome and beyond. What motivated such extreme violence? Are the killers evil, or just drug addicts? Did they know what they were doing? Or were they possessed? If so, by what?

These are just some of the questions that Nicola Lagioia seeks to answer. In the weeks and months after the crime comes to light, he conducts interviews, collects documents, meets with the victim's family, and even starts corresponding with one of the killers. As it soon becomes clear, however, to investigate this crime means to descend into the dark heart of Rome--a city that is unlivable and yet teeming with life, overrun by rats and wild animals, and plagued by corruption, drugs, and violence. Yet, the Eternal City is also a place that, more than any other in the world, seems to inspire a sense of absolute freedom in its inhabitants.

Proceeding in concentric circles, Nicola Lagioia leads us through a maze of betrayed expectations, sexual confusion, inability to grow up, economic grievances, crises of identity--progressively tightening the focus of the analysis to locate the breaking point after which anything is possible.

Sharp, hypnotic, devastating: The City of The Living is an investigation not just of a crime but of human nature itself; of the tension between responsibility and guilt, between the drive to oppress and the desire to be free; of who we are and who we can become.