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The Twenty Days of Turin: A Novel
The Twenty Days of Turin: A Novel | Giorgio De Maria
14 posts | 11 read | 20 to read
Written during the height of the 1970s Italian domestic terror, a cult novel, with distinct echoes of Lovecraft and Borges, makes its English-language debut. In the spare wing of a church-run sanatorium, some zealous youths create "the Library," a space where lonely citizens can read one anothers personal diaries and connect with like-minded souls in "dialogues across the ether." But when their scribblings devolve into the ugliest confessions of the macabre, the Librarys users learn too late that a malicious force has consumed their privacy and their sanity. As the city of Turin suffers a twenty-day "phenomenon of collective psychosis" culminating in nightly massacres that hundreds of witnesses cannot explain, the Library is shut down and erased from history. That is, until a lonely salaryman decides to investigate these mysterious events, which the citizenry of Turin fear to mention. Inevitably drawn into the citys occult netherworld, he unearths the stuff of modern nightmares: whats shared can never be unshared. An allegory inspired by the grisly neo-fascist campaigns of its day, The Twenty Days of Turin has enjoyed a fervent cult following in Italy for forty years. Now, in a fretful new age of "lone-wolf" terrorism fueled by social media, we can find uncanny resonances in Giorgio De Marias vision of mass fear: a mute, palpitating dread that seeps into every moment of daily existence. With its stunning anticipation of the Internetand the apocalyptic repercussions of oversharingthis bleak, prescient story is more disturbingly pertinent than ever. Brilliantly translated into English for the first time by Ramon Glazov, The Twenty Days of Turin establishes De Marias place among the literary ranks of Italo Calvino and beside classic horror masters such as Edgar Allan Poe and H. P. Lovecraft. Hauntingly imaginative, with visceral prose that chills to the marrow, the novel is an eerily clairvoyant magnum opus, long overdue but ever timely.
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Therewillbebooks
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Some potential late October spooky reads.

snapsnarlgrowl Thornyhold is an affectionate parody of the gothic romance, from one of the genre‘s best. It certainly wasn‘t what I was expecting going in, but it was fun! 2w
Therewillbebooks @snapsnarlgrowl Thanks! I've been wanting to read it for a while 2w
42 likes2 comments
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Bertha_Mason

""Sleeping pills couldn‘t help him; they couldn‘t lower the bottom of his lake. There was nothing that could lower it . . . I remember him talking about space, about room . . . He wanted room! He said that within him there was no room left, no more space to move, to turn around. He said something horrible as well: ‘Even if I wanted to kill myself, I wouldn‘t find the space to die!‘""

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Bertha_Mason
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review
Therewillbebooks
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Pickpick

This is a creepy, weird, prescient, and deeply interesting Italian novel. It's a work that merits further analysis and a re-read or two. We discuss doing just that on our latest episode.

https://open.spotify.com/show/6A6hXZ7eaOG7BtHOSJpCTI?si=a65UE8oGRni7kTg7LJktoQ

88 likes2 stack adds
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LaraS
Twenty Days of Turin | Giorgio De Maria
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#screamathon TBR! I won't read all of these but I always overestimate and read whatever comes in at the library first (and when the rest arrive halfway through Dec it's like finding extra fries at the bottom of the bag)

The tagged book is a cheat because it just came in so it'll be finished before October...it's like a warmup!

Noticing a distinct lack of diversity here 🤔...#integrateyourshelf recs, anyone?

#screamathon2020 @4thhouseontheleft

LaraS @KVanRead oooo, those look great. Added to the list, thanks!! 👻 🧛‍♀️ 4y
See All 12 Comments
WhatWouldJaneDo A few of my faves on here! For diverse recs, seconding The Only Good Indians or anything by Stephen Graham Jones. Empire of Wild by Cherie Dimaline was awesome. Carmen Maria Machado and Yoko Ogawa have great spooky short story collections. Silvia Moreno Garcia's newest is on my TBR right now and I loved her vampire novel Certain Dark Things. 4y
alisiakae I read the Akata Witch series during #screamathon last year and loved it 4y
kamoorephoto Horrorstor is a favorite of mine 👍🏼 4y
LaraS @WhatWouldJaneDo wow amazing, thanks! I love the idea of adding some short stories to my list. 4y
LaraS @4thhouseontheleft yes! I've seen that one getting a lot of litsy love - adding it to my list! At this rate i'm going to need to extend my pics into November heehee. Thank you! 4y
ErinSBecker Throwing a few more recommendations on here! 4y
ErinSBecker Murder mystery by a mixed-race woman from South Africa and Swaziland. 4y
LaraS @ErinSBecker thanks - those look intriguing! I knew I could count on Littens to help me out. 🤓 4y
20 likes12 comments
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ladyneverwhere
Twenty Days of Turin | Giorgio De Maria
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I think I did alright #in2018, especially since I usually get books from the library instead of buying them. Though I was very surprised to realize I didn't give up on a book this year and that I didn't reread anything. That's a very unusual reading year for me 🤣

RealLifeReading You did great!! I‘m a heavy library user myself so yay libraries! 6y
12 likes2 comments
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placebeyondthespines
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Originally published in the 1970‘s in Italian, this book was translated into English nearly 40 years later. The city of Turin, where the story takes place, has a dark history in which citizens were tormented by twenty sleepless nights filled with gruesome and inexplicable murders. Ten years later, one man sets out to investigate the terror that gripped this city and soon becomes entangled in the horrors that slowly unravel the secrets of the past.

placebeyondthespines When I first read this book in the winter of last year, I had spent weeks in my apartment alone recovering from an invasive surgery. I couldn‘t do the simplest of tasks and was forced into what seemed to me at the time, an endless state of unease and restlessness. I was feeling very down and, in the darkest of places, I reached for this novel. Most people might think it best to reach for something light, or uplifting, but sometimes when your... 6y
placebeyondthespines head is already in that dark space, it seems most alluring to let yourself live in that space for a while in order to truly know that you‘re capable of pulling yourself out. That is exactly what this novel did for me. It illuminated the deepest, darkest corners of my mind, and however frightening the content and ideas of this book were, I still felt alive and consumed by the imagery. 6y
placebeyondthespines I‘m hesitant to review this book now because I feel compelled to reread it to see if my perspective changes given that I‘m no longer in that dark place. Do you ever feel like your perception of a book is shaped by your state of mind at the time you read it? Have you ever reread a book in a different headspace and felt differently about it? 6y
BarbaraBB Great review and that you dared reading it in those dark times 6y
placebeyondthespines @BarbaraBB thank you!🖤🖤🖤 6y
7 likes1 stack add5 comments
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Wellreadhead
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Angitron I absolutely loved this book!! Chilling though. 6y
BarbaraBB Interesting blurb! 6y
102 likes2 stack adds2 comments
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Bookmarkie
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Lunch with an Italian cult classic. Anyone read this one?
#readharder2018.
#genrefictionintranslation

review
parasolofdoom
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Mehso-so

Full review https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1906505051

This was good but lacked a certain something. It had all the makings of a fine meal but could have used a touch more seasoning. It was creepy without ever really getting to the point of tense unease.

5 likes1 stack add
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parasolofdoom
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#currentlyreading This went straight to my reading list as soon as I saw the cover last year on a round up of new horror (this is only new in English, I believe it was originally published in the Italian in the 70s?) And by happy accident, it will be my D entry for #LitsyAtoZ. I only count things read in alphabetical order for a little extra challenge instead of filling in here and there.

Karkar This sounds good! 7y
parasolofdoom @Karkar I'm really liking it so far! It's under 200 pages and I'm really only getting a vague but unsettled feeling of what's going on 40 pages in. It's through the lens of someone investigating events ten years later. 7y
9 likes1 stack add2 comments
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prowlix
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Pickpick

This book is weird! Despite being written in the 70s the author just nails how numbing the bombardment of present day social media can be. You follow an unnamed narrator digging into an event 10yr prior that no one openly acknowledges. It has that slow building tension which is really hard to pull off in a slim novel. I find myself thinking about this book even after finishing it several days ago. Recommend for anyone looking for weird read 4⭐️

30 likes1 stack add
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prowlix
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Next up - newly translated but originally published in 1970s Italy this book tell the story of 20 days of a city being plagued by insomnia and murder. “The Library” is a space created where citizens can share their diaries or writings with other strangers but the author‘s identities can be released for a small fee. The description is eerily like some modern social media

bookloo This has been sitting in my Kindle for months now! Looking forward to your review to see if I should give it a look. ☺️💞 7y
34 likes1 comment
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Bluestocking
Twenty Days of Turin | Giorgio De Maria
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Pickpick

A story of mounting evil that is astoundingly prescient about the dark rabbit hole of the social media landscape today.

Kirstin So cute! 😻😻 8y
6 likes1 comment