Francesco Carofiglio will join us to present his latest book Tutto il mio folle amore (Garzanti), together with Nicoletta Verna.

The book:
July 1943, Bari. A peaceful march of students celebrating the fall of the Fascist regime clashes with a line of soldiers and militia. Gunshots tear through the scorching air, cutting down dozens of young lives marching for freedom. Alessandro Latorre, seventeen years old, stands powerless before this brutal violence—an event that will forever mark his generation. For him, as for many others, that summer is when innocence ends. Italo Acquaviva, known as Lallo, is Ale’s “twin cousin,” born the same day of the same year. They are opposites yet inseparable. Lallo is a rebel, a sports champion, a rising star of the city’s rowing club; Ale, politically engaged, excels at his classical high school studies and plays in the Jazz Boys, a small underground band.

In September, after the armistice, a group of young intellectuals takes over the Radio Bari station. In no time, what was once a tool of Fascist propaganda becomes the most important voice of the resistance in Europe. It is in those radio studios that Alessandro meets Carolina Fitzgerald, an Italian-Irish girl who fled Rome with her family after the bombing. Carolina is brilliant, witty, stunningly beautiful, and a gifted singer. The lives of these young people, teetering on the edge of a collapsing world, are about to change forever.

Francesco Carofiglio offers us a sweeping story of courage, friendship, and love, in which the dreams of adolescence intertwine with the harsh reality of a wounded Italy. Against the backdrop of events shaping the course of the world conflict, Alessandro, Lallo, and Carolina cross the threshold into adulthood, never to look back. From the microphones of Radio Bari rise the notes of a new music. A voice of hope emerges—the voice of those who refuse to give up and have chosen to fight. The resistance belongs to everyone.

The author:
An architect, director, and illustrator, Francesco Carofiglio has worked for many years as an actor and playwright. He writes screenplays and scripts for film and television. In addition to L’estate del cane nero (Marsilio, 2008, four editions), he published the novel With or Without You (BUR, 2005) and, with his brother Gianrico, the graphic novel Cacciatori nelle tenebre (Rizzoli, 2007). His more recent novels include Wok (Piemme, 2014), La casa nel bosco(Rizzoli, 2014), Voglio vivere una volta sola (Piemme, 2014), Una specie di felicità (Piemme, 2017), Il maestro(Piemme, 2017), the children’s book Jonas e il mondo nero (Piemme, 2018), L’estate dell’incanto (Piemme, 2019), and Prometto che ti darò il mondo (Piemme, 2021). With Feltrinelli he published Cattivi. Mister H. (2022) and Cattivi. Lady M (2023). In 2024, Garzanti released La stagione bella.