Cocaine
Named Library Journal Best Fiction in Translation 2013.
"Cocaine is a brilliant black comedy that belongs on the same shelf as Evelyn Waugh's Vile Bodies and Dawn Powell's The Wicked Pavilion. Pitigrilli is an acidic aphorist and a wicked observer of social folly."—Jay McInerney, author of Bright Lights, Big City and Brightness Falls
"Pitigrilli was an enjoyable writer—spicy and rapid—like lightning."—Umberto Eco
“The name of the author Pitigrilli … is so well known in Italy as to be almost a byword for ‘naughtiness’ … The only wonder to us is that some enterprising translator did not render some of his books available in English sooner.”
– The New York Times,
Paris in the 1920s—dizzy and decadent. Where a young man can make a fortune with his wits . . . unless he is led into temptation. Cocaine's dandified hero Tito Arnaudi invents lurid scandals and gruesome deaths, and sells these stories to the newspapers. But his own life becomes even more outrageous than his press reports when he acquires three demanding mistresses. Elegant, witty, and wicked, Pitigrilli's classic novel was first published in Italian in 1921 and charts the comedy and tragedy of a young man's downfall and the lure of a bygone era. The novel's descriptions of sex and drug use prompted church authorities to place it on a list of forbidden books. Cocaine retains its venom even today.
Pitigrilli was the pen name of Dino Segre, born in Turin in 1893. He worked as a foreign correspondent in Paris during the 1920s, and became equally celebrated and notorious for a series of audacious and subversive books. He died in 1975.
Pitigrilli is the pseudonym for Dino Segre (1893–1975), an Italian writer who made his living as a journalist and novelist. Published in 1921, Cocaine is Pitigrilli's most lauded work and placed on the "forbidden books" list by the Catholic Church. He founded the literary magazine Grandi Firme, which was published in Turin from 1924 to 1938, when it was banned by anti-Semitic Race Laws of the Fascist government. Although baptized as a Catholic, Segre was classified as Jewish and worked in the 1930s as an informant for OVRA, the Fascist secret service. Pitigrilli's efforts, beginning in 1938, to change his racial status failed and he was interned as a Jew in 1940 and was released later that year.
Michael R. Aldrich, Ph.D., is the author of the first doctoral dissertation on cannabis in the United States, Marijuana Myths and Folklore (1970); editor of the first pot 'zine, The Marijuana Review, 1968-1973; co-founder of Amorphia, The Cannabis Cooperative (1969–1973); organizer of California Marijuana Initiative (1972); curator of Fitz Hugh Ludlow Memorial Library (1974–2002) and the Aldrich Archives (1974–present); program coordinator, Institute for Community Health Outreach (California statewide AIDS outreach worker training program); executive director of CHAMP medical marijuana community center, San Francisco (2001–2002); and co-founder of the San Francisco Patient and Resource Center (SPARC), (2010–present). He and his wife Michelle have worked in the marijuana movement for more than 40 years together.
Mark James Estren holds two PhDs from Columbia, one in English and one in psychology. A nationally known journalist for more than 35 years and Pulitzer Prize winner for the book, A History of Underground Comics (Ronin), he was also named one of the “People to Watch” by Fortune magazine. Estren is a current contributor to The Washington Post, Bottom Line newsletter group, and Journal of Animal Ethics, as well as an executive producer (CBS and ABC News; also PBS) and major contributor to In a Word (Dell).
