Description
Book SynopsisIn 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.
Trade ReviewPraise for
Distant Light:
Despite its fable-like structure and brevity, Moresco has Kafka’s power to unnerve, and Walser’s genial strangeness. Something like a supernatural modernist story, Distant Light’s real territory is dreams, where readers may find the book’s imagery still lingering. —Publishers Weekly
The imagery and language glow throughout. An unsettling and strangely tender novel. —Kirkus Reviews
Antonio Moresco offers an otherworldly story of isolation. —Shelf Awareness
Distant Light is a dense and thoughtful book that should be lingered over, rather than burned through. It dwells on esoteric questions, but also provides unsettling insight into the darkest depths of the human condition, as well as a uniquely complex rendering of its polarity. —The Literary Review
