The Past is a Foreign Country

by Gianrico Carofiglio

Translated from the original Italian by Howard Curtis

One hot summer, as world-weary bloodhound Lieutenant Chiti spends sleepless nights hunting for the serial sex attacker terrorising his city, trainee lawyer Giorgio is befriended by dangerously charismatic Francesco. Slowly the innocent Giorgio is lured into a corrupt world of beautiful women, card sharps and casual violence, in dingy poker dens and luxury villas. Then one terrifying night Giorgio is forced to realise just how far he has left his past behind.....

The Past is a Foreign Country (winner of the Premio Bancarella) is an intense and superior psychological thriller. It has sold over 200,000 copies in his native Italy thus far and is currently being filmed

(From Publisher).

Gianrico Carofiglio is an anti-Mafia prosecutor living in Bari, South Italy. He began to write detective novels while dealing with a midlife crisis, and his prize-winning Involuntary Witness and A Walk in the Dark became instant bestsellers in Italy and have since been sold around the world.

This novel is probably the most exciting Italian novel and well written one in recent times. Carofiglio is very clever in giving a tale of inevitability of the descent to hell accomplished by the protagonist.

A breathless tour-de-force into the mind of a suicidal genius.