Carlo Vanin

La Notte della Mediarchia – Il Commissario Elio Gamba (Panda edizioni, 2014 ISBN 9788896753941)

download an excerpt in  Italian

In an alternate present ruled by the regime of Mass-Mediarchy, the industrial area of Marghera (Venice) has exploded  exhaling in the air a putrid fog that has condemned the Italian north-east to an eternal night.
Elio Gamba is a superintendent of the New Company of Police. He is violent and incomprehensible, and  addicted, as most of the population, to the state drug: AEIOU tablets.
Carla Chinellato is a detective inspector who has just been transferred to Gamba’s police station. She does her all not to lose her sanity in a world that has lost every sense of logic. Marzia Gamba is the deceased wife of the Commissioner, but in this story not even death serves to soothe the pain.
Cristiano Gamba, aka Musashi, is Elio’son, born on the same day of the explosion of Marghera. His body has been black ever since.
Sun-Eye is blind and wants to see again.
There are things that bite in here.

MIRKO E IL MOSTRO YA (coming of age, magic realism – out on EBOOK with LA CASE publishing) Mirko is an empty teenager, the hip, popular and prejudiced son of a wealthy manager of NorthEast Italy. His life flows peacefully between binge drinking, joints, outings with his girlfriend and scooter races, until one day in his class a new schoolmate, Azra, arrives. But she has monstrous features and speaks an almost unintelligible language. The Monster, as she is immediately branded by everyone, is almost instantly segregated and virtually ignored by classmates and teachers.

However, the Monster’s appearance triggers in Mirko a disturbing series of musings he is not used to. In his empty head the first drafts of ideas start to form and, while early on Mirko opposes a strong resistance to the development of a conscience, later, thanks to a disturbing dream in which the true essence of the Monster is revealed, his fear and loathing towards Azra become curiousity and, finally, love.

Mirko discovers that the Monster is an ancient entity, living in the dark prison of an abyss, perhaps a goddess, and brought into this world by a group of rich people of various nationalities who use her milk as elixir of life. Azra seems to be their slave, but in fact it was she has chosen to be dragged into our world, since she saw Mirko from her above and, like any teenager, she fell in love with him. During a school trip to Paris Mirko and Azra will have sex together, and after that the time comes for the Monster to return to her people. This can only be achieved by her death and Mirko will be her reluctant murderer. The meeting with Azra will leave a strong mark on his life and, after graduation, he will begin to become a monster himself, with a great imaginative power (a gift from Azra) that makes him approach the art of writing. In the end, in fact, we find that Mirko, in fact, is the author of the pages we have just read.