As God Commands
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
The bestselling author of I’m Not Scared delivers “a black thriller with the momentum of an action-packed Hollywood movie” (The Times Literary Supplement).
The winner of the prestigious Strega Prize, As God Commands is a dizzying and compulsively readable novel set in a moribund town in industrial Italy, where a father and son contend with a hostile world and their own inner demons. The economically depressed village of Varrano, where Cristiano Zena lives with his hard-drinking, out-of-work father, Rino, is a world away from the picturesque towns of travel-brochure Italy. When Rino and his rough-edged cronies Danilo and Quattro Formaggi come up with a plan to reverse all their fortunes, Cristiano wonders if maybe their lives are poised for deliverance after all. But the plan goes horribly awry. On a night of apocalyptic weather, each character will act in a way that will have irreversible consequences for themselves and others, and Cristiano will find his life changed forever, and not in the way he had hoped. Gritty and relentless, As God Commands moves at breakneck speed, blending brutal violence, dark humor, and surprising tenderness. With clear-eyed affection, Niccolò Ammaniti introduces a cast of unforgettable characters trapped at the crossroads of hope and despair.
“It is impossible not to be gripped.” —Financial Times
“Punk-rock desperadoes and a daft father-son tragicomedy team run riot through the mess and splendor of today’s Italy . . . Propulsive from the first page . . . Not at all pretty, but darkly, ferociously beautiful—a triumph for Europe’s hottest novelist.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Plans for an ATM heist go terribly wrong for a bumbling gang of Italian ruffians in Ammaniti's latest. Rino Zena, an unemployed single father with neo-Nazi tendencies, can barely keep his teenage son, Cristiano, out of social services. Zeno's friend Danilo Aprea hopes to buy a lingerie shop in order to woo back his wife after the death of their daughter. Their plan, to boost an ATM, hinges on the car-thieving skills of Corrado Rumitz, nicknamed Quattro Formaggi, a not-quite-right misfit obsessed with a porn star named Ramona. After watching Dog Day Afternoon, Rino takes the movie as a sign from God not to go forward with the plan, but word fails to get to Danilo or to Quattro Formaggi, who, on his way to meet up, is distracted by a teenager he thinks is Ramona. When a massive rain storm hits, the series of tragic coincidences quickly turns deadly. Ammaniti, a wonder at creating graphic black comedy, keeps the plot rolling while pushing his characters to their absolute limits, even if the last act is a bit messy. If the Coen brothers ever wanted to go Italian, this'd be prime adaptation material.