Everything Calls for Salvation
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- £9.99
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- £9.99
Publisher Description
NETFLIX SERIES TO BE RELEASED OCTOBER 2022
WINNER OF THE 2020 YOUTH STREGA PRIZE
"Mencarelli writes with the grace and power of a poet. His words illuminate truth like a flash of lightning."—Il Sole 24 Ore
"Moving and engaging. This novel will stay with you."—Goffredo Fofi, Internazionale
"Extraordinary for its intensity and empathy."—Radio Tre
June 1994. Twenty-year-old Daniele wakes up in a hospital room surrounded by strangers. Slowly, memories of the previous night return to him: a spiral of anxiety and anger, an explosion of violence so intense that it almost inflicted irreparable damage to him and his family. To his horror, he learns that he's been sentenced to a week of mandatory treatment in a psychiatric ward.
Writing with lucid realism and stunning emotional force and drawing from the author's own personal experience of mental illness, Mencarelli chronicles seven days in the hospital as he struggles to find a way out of the darkness. Daniele finds unexpected companions in his fellow patients—men who, like him, have felt the full brunt of life's pain. Together they will realise the hidden strength and value of their common fragility and the boundless empathy they feel towards others.
By focusing on some of the most marginalized people in our society, Mencarelli has written a heart-breaking and unforgettable novel that challenges our notion of normality and celebrates the salvific power of solidarity and vulnerability.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A young Italian man is involuntarily committed to a psychiatric ward in Mencarelli's evocative work of autofiction, his English-language debut. In June 1994, 20-year-old Daniele Mencarelli wakes up in a hospital bed. He attacked his father the night before during a psychotic break and has been committed for seven days. The doctors—one of whom Daniele dislikes immediately, though another seems genuinely compassionate—promise a diagnosis and treatment plan for him despite his long history of seeking help but seeing few results. His fellow patients include Mario, a calm older man, catatonic Alessandro, and the queer and flamboyant Gianluca. The days crawl by, with disappointing food, sweltering heat, and visits from patients' family members (some more supportive than others). Meanwhile, gruff behavior by nurses and forgetful doctors undercut any therapeutic aspects of Daniele's time in the hospital, and as his days there wind down, unexpected crises reshape his experience. Mencarelli captures Daniele's muddled emotional state—a blend of shame, confusion, and chafing at restrictions—in powerful, compact scenes. With its bracing view of the hero's interior world, this meditative novel viscerally excoriates the failings of his treatment.
