Sasso - Hardcover

Sturz, James

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0712669795 ISBN 13: 9780712669795

Publisher: Century, 2001

Synopsis

In one of the caves surrounding a small southern Italian town, a naked teenage couple is found dead. The cuts on their faces are self-inflicted, brought about by frenzied gnawing at the cave walls. What a team of investigators cannot know is that these are only the first in series of deaths.

About this title

Review:

Dry heat has its own exhaustion, its own madness; the visiting academics in James Sturz's Sasso were always going to be outsiders in the closed-in South Italian society of Mancanzano, but the logic of events and the climate leads them to terrible conclusions. Mancanzano is a town whose inhabitants used to live in caves in the volcanic rock that surrounds it, and still use powdered rock to cool off or stave off hunger. A series of dead teenage couples are found intertwined in caves with frescoes painted onto the crumbling rock, with paint crammed into their dead mouths; the frescoes themselves, as they are progressively revealed, become more and more sinister. The unnamed narrator and his colleagues drift into ever more dangerous emotional entanglements with each other and the townsfolk around them, and the authorities flail around looking for explanations in more and more lunatic intellectual byways, and for scapegoats... This deeply atmospheric thriller takes place in the glare of the brightest sunlight, yet its heart is as gloomy as the darkest kind of noir fiction. There is a passionate doominess to every step along the way here as well as a constant wild comedy--Sasso is an impressive and original thriller. --Roz Kaveney

Review:

"One of the most intriguing and original books I have read so far this year - a most assured and memorable debut" (Sunday Telegraph)

"Lyrical and pacy - Sturz has a brilliant future" (Eve)

"This first novel is narrated with such wit, eroticism and ability to terrify that it marks an outstanding debut" (The Scotsman)

"A remarkable first novel - both extraordinary and sensational - riveting reading" (Publishing News)

About this edition

• Publisher: Century
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0712669795
• ISBN 13: 9780712669795
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320