Agony

THE BEAUTIFUL, young Countess Fiorenza d’Arda has died dramatically at her villa near Lake Geneva. Judge François Ferpierre, the senior magistrate assigned to Lausanne’s central court, arrives to investigate whether it was murder or suicide. In either case, who is responsible? AGONY is the first English-language translation of Federico De Roberto’s Spasimo, a psychological-detective novel. Here, for the first time, a Sicilian author has written a detective procedural. De Roberto, a master of verismo, is celebrated today for his acute political, social, and psychological insights. Leonardo Sciascia called De Roberto’s I Viceré the greatest Italian novel after Alessandro Manzoni’s I promessi sposi. “If we are who we are today, we owe it in part to characters just like those portrayed in the novels of De Roberto.” — Stefania Auci, author of I Leoni di Sicilia, La Repubblica.— Google Books