Gregory Conti

A mysterious murder in present-day Milan intertwines with a cold case from the 1940s in this thrilling novel about film, freedom, censorship, and the persistent threat of fascism.An acclaimed director, Manlio Parrini, decides to return behind the camera. Having abandoned cinema at the height of his success because he found the industry to be “a place without truth,” he now, in his 70s, has a special story in mind: a film about Augusto De Angelis, a pioneer of Italian crime fiction in the 1930s. The violent death of De Angelis remains, for Parrini, an unsolved case marked by the stench of injustice and blind fascist censorship, a story that needs to be told now more than ever.Yet just as Parrini finds a producer for his project and begins writing the screenplay with his friend and accomplice Sara De Viesti, another mystery bursts into his life: the murder of the elderly widow Bastoni, who owns the villa next door to his.

The conquest of new lands has been the greatest occupation of our species: for hundreds of thousands of years, humans have searched for new territories to inhabit, finding in the city the best place to live in the last hundred years. Looking at the parabola of our geographical expansion, it sounds like humans have gone from being a generalist species, capable of colonizing any environment, to very quickly becoming a specialized species, capable of thriving only within a particular habitat. The city seems to have become the only place where we can expect to thrive and reproduce, because it is the only place where our specialization gives us the best chance of survival, and quality of life. However, ''species specialization'' is only effective in a stable environment: in changing environmental conditions, it becomes dangerous. And if the resources the city needs to thrive are not unlimited, global warming can permanently change the environment of our cities - an event that would be fatal. But it is the city itself, as it is today, that is the main driver of environmental destruction. Mankind is confronted with a paradox: we must rethink our cities and make them a lasting ecological niche. In this clear, accessible, and fascinating work, Stefano Mancuso proposes a green solution: how would our cities be transformed if their framework was modeled on plants?