The Painter

An old Danish artist falls in love with the colours and beauties of the nature of Carovigno, a town located in the Italian area of Salento, and moves to live there in the centre of the old town. During his daily creative work he will paint and photograph something or someone he wouldn’t have to… Three local wild boys, mocked and excluded by the conformist society of the town, live a mad life. Their “immoderacy” will lead them to get into a mess, causing pain, despair, and making them fall into the abyss of murders. Inspector Matteo Lorenzi, from the Milanese flying squad and the journalist Cristina Petruzzi from Radio Popolare, will end up to interrupt their holiday to investigate and collaborate with the local police on some murders. A tragedy, a real disaster of the modern age that will lead to explode the myth of conformism, personal interest, opportunism and selfishness of a world of adults who are no longer taking care of the needs of new generations. However, are the real marginalized people those young guys who express clearly their discomfort, by taking synthetic drugs to crack their brain, or that multitude of young people who, hidden by a quiet and submissive appearance, try to restrain an unprecedented social rage caused by the lack of a future prospect? In the breathtaking, sad and painful end of the book, characterized by blood and tragedy, the young “Tony the Scrawny”, the leader of the marginalized gang of Carovigno, will reveal the reverse of the medal: the dark side of a selfish society, which aims at chasing success, money and power by abandoning its children and young people to their own devices, to a solitary future made of pain, despair and death.