The authors combine the text of The Mystery of Edwin Drood, literary scholarship, the detective genre, and their knowledge of Rome to produce a hilarious, offbeat satire. Translated by Gregory Dowling. A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book
Charles John Huffam Dickens, (7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870), pen-name "Boz", was one of the most popular English novelists of the Victorian era, as well as a vigorous social campaigner.
Critics George Gissing and G. K. Chesterton championed Dickens' mastery of prose, his endless invention of unique, clever personalities, and his powerful social sensibilities, but fellow writers such as George Henry Lewes, Henry James, and Virginia Woolf faulted his work for sentimentality, implausible occurrences, and grotesque characterizations.
The popularity of Dickens' novels and short stories has meant that they have never gone out of print. Many of Dickens' novels first appeared in periodicals and magazines in serialized form―a popular format for fiction at the time―and, unlike many other authors who completed entire novels before serial production commenced, Dickens often composed his works in parts, in the order in which they were meant to appear. Such a practice lent his stories a particular rhythm, punctuated by one minor "cliffhanger" after another, to keep the public looking forward to the next installm
Carlo Fruttero (born 19 September 1926 in Turin) is an Italian writer, journalist, translator and editor of anthologies. He is mostly known for his joint work with Franco Lucentini, especially as authors of crime novels. The duo was also editor of the science fiction series Urania from the 1960s to the 1980s.
Franco Lucentini (December 24, 1920 - August 5, 2002) was an Italian writer, journalist, translator and editor of anthologies.
Born in Rome on 24 December 1920 to Emma Marzi and Venanzio Lucentini, a miller from Marche and later the owner of a bakery in Rome.
While studying Philosophy at the University of Rome, Lucentini was one of the organizers of a practical joke against the fascist regime: on 5 May 1941 he and a friend distributed among other students paper streamers. When unrolled during a public meeting, they revealed writings such as "Down with the war!", "Down with Hitler!" and "Long live freedom!". Lucentini was arrested and spent two months in prison.
Lucentini graduated in February 1943. Called to arms in 1943, he was refused the admission to the training to become an officer. After the Armistice, the Allied armed forces put to use his writing skills as a junior editor for the "United Nations News" press agency in Naples.
After the war, Lucentini worked in Rome for ANSA news agency; later, associated with ONA news agency, he went to Prague and Vienna. The atmosphere of postwar Vienna gave him the inspiration for the novella I compagni sconosciuti. After a brief time again in Rome, in 1949 he left for Paris where he was employed in several jobs (deliveryman, teacher, masseur).
While in Paris, he first met the two most important people in his life: Simone Benne Darses, 12 years older than him, who was to become his lifetime wife; and, in 1952, Carlo Fruttero, with whom a life-long literary collaboration began in 1957, when Lucentini moved to Turin, where both of them worked for Einaudi publishing house. Lucentini frequently traveled to Paris in scouting assignments for Einaudi looking for new authors and titles to bring to Italy. He discovered, amongst other's, Jorge Luis Borges and was responsible for the translation from the original Spanish versions to Italian. Lucentini also translated several foreign books for Einaudi from many different languages including Chinesse and Japanese.
As a very successful and appreciated team, Fruttero & Lucentini wrote books and worked in publishing, directing book series and magazines (Il Mago, Urania), and editing fiction anthologies, for Einaudi publishing house and, since 1961, for Mondadori. In 1972 Lucentini and Fruttero began writing for Turin-based newspaper La Stampa (then directed by Alberto Ronchey), writing the column "L'Agenda di F. & L.", commenting with humour and irony on current facts; they also wrote for L'Espresso and Epoca.
Their first book was the poetry collection L'idraulico non verrą, in 1971. But the first largely successful work was the crime novel La donna della domenica (1972), set in Turin. The novel
