Malacqua

After a four-day deluge, Naples is flooded. Buildings collapse, sinkholes appear. Strange events spread across the city: ghostly voices emit from the Castel dell'Ovo and a neglected child finds a singing coin. A melancholy journalist searches for meaning, as the narrative takes us into the minds of those who have suffered in the floods. Mysteriously withdrawn from publication until Pugliese's death in 2012, and only now appearing in English, Malacqua is a richly peopled portrait of a much-mythologised city.

Nicola Pugliese was born in Milan in 1944, but lived almost all his life in Naples. A journalist like his father, he wrote for many years for the journal Rome. In 1977, discovered by Italo Calvino, he published his first novel, Malacqua, which attracted a great deal of attention but inexplicably went through only a single edition. Pugliese withdrew from public life, but in 2008 published his second book, La Nave Nera, a collection of short stories published by Compagnia dei trovatori in Naples. He died in 2012.