Clandestinity
In this four-story suite, a modern master of Italian literature delves into the wonder and strangeness of the human condition.
Eerie, fabulist, and elegant, each of Moresco’s stories features a central character at a different time of his life: childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood. In these beautiful and unsettling narratives, a dreamlike logic governs a vivid and strange physical world. In “Blue Room,” the adolescent protagonist carries on a voyeuristic relationship with a blind old woman in a mysterious house. In “The Hole,” a young boy becomes fascinated by an outhouse toilet, a portal through which he observes bodily wastes, curiosities, and portents. In the title story, an act of violence deepens the nightmarish tones and mood of disorientation. And in “The King,” a child narrator—who may or may not be present—witnesses a horrific visit from an exiled ruler.
Full of bodily parts, functions, and desires, Moresco’s stories distort time and reality to summon a world of carnal immediacy and uncanny haziness. A spectral and unnerving work of art, expertly translated by Richard Dixon, Clandestinity is a testament to Moresco’s genius.
Antonio Moresco was born in Mantua and lives in Milan. Considered one of the founders of modern Italian literature, Clandestinity is his first collection of short stories. He has gone on to publish several more books, among them the short novel La cipolla (The Onion), the autobiographical Lettere a nessuno (Letters to No One), and his 500-page novel Gli esordi (The Beginning). Distant Light was published by Archipelago in 2013.
Richard Dixon lives and works in Italy. His translations include works by Umberto Eco, Roberto Calasso, Carlo Emilio Gadda, Paolo Volponi and Stefano Massini.
