Everybody's Right - Hardcover

Paolo Sorrentino

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1846554950 ISBN 13: 9781846554957

Publisher: Harvill Secker, 2012

Synopsis

'I'm going back to what I was twenty years ago. I'm riding across a terrain of buried curiosity, the adrenaline is starting to flow again, and the old obsessions are coming back: I want to start doing cocaine every day, I want to run after every female who passes, I want to smell the smells of Italy again, I want my old life back. It's a bit late for all that, I know, but who gives a fuck? I want to die stark naked, drowned in a well of Ballantine's, surrounded by whores. All this I want, suddenly, I want it very much indeed. But I hide it well.' This is the story of Tony Pagoda, a hero of our time, a man of incredible energies and appetites with a dark secret in his past and a unique perspective on the world. 1980s Italy is Tony's oyster. A charismatic singer, he is talented and successful, up to his neck in money, drugs and women, enjoying an extravagant lifestyle in Naples and Capri. But when life gets complicated, Tony decides it's time for a change. While on tour, he disappears to Brazil and an existence free from excess, where all he has to worry about are the herculean cockroaches. But after eighteen years of humid Amazonian exile, somebody is willing to sign a giant cheque to bring Tony back to Italy. How will he face the temptations of his old habits and the new century? A huge bestseller in Italy, Everybody's Right is an extraordinary debut novel from the award-winning film director Paolo Sorrentino. It is a book about Italy and a book about the modern world; a book about Tony and a book about all of us. Through Tony's irresistible voice Sorrentino illustrates his imaginative power and his incredible gifts for drama and satire.

About this title

About the Author

Celebrated screenwriter and director Paolo Sorrentino was born in Naples in 1970. His films have been widely acclaimed internationally have won, among other prizes, the Cannes Prix du Jury, the Nastro d'Argento, the Davide di Donatello and the Italian Golden Globe either for best director or for best screenplay. The Consequences of Love, The Family Friend, Il Divo and This Must Be the Place have all been nominated for the Palme d'Or. Everybody's Right is Sorrentino's first novel and was shortlisted for the prestigious Strega Prize

Review

"Frequently funny writing... The story speeds along with a fast-moving, Raymond Chandler type plot, although it finishes with a shocking tenderness" Daily Mail "[A] visceral first-person account and fantastically unreliable narration brilliantly capturing the brand of modern-day Italy that Berlusconi exported... A novel of bleak gallows humour" GQ "Flooded with neat aphorisms and winning vignettes...it works as a cock-eyed state-of-the-nation address after the years of Berlusconification... A blackly comic birl through a life of excess, regret and reflection" Glasgow Sunday Herald "A furious, ironic, idiosyncratic, unexpurgated torrent, capturing Italian modernity" Kirkus "Sorrentino uses this novel to deal with Italy's unstoppable descent into today's dazed, corrupted and tragically foolish reality...[in] exceptionally adventurous language" La Repubblica

Edition details

• Publisher: Harvill Secker
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 1846554950
• ISBN 13: 9781846554957
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 352