There are nods to dark masters in Malacqua — undercurrents of Kafka, a drumbeat of Beckett — but Nicola Pugliese’s novel has its own compelling voice, filled with the sound of water rushing, gushing, flowing, hammering on rooftops, falling in threads from the sky.
Naples is drowning, disintegrating, battered by relentless rain. Buildings collapse; huge sinkholes swallow cars and people. Ghostly and unsettling events are reported all over the city: mysterious visions, hidden dolls howling in anguish, coins that emit music audible only to small children. Signs and portents. Naples is an urban nightmare, the saturated ground itself a treacherous element. With a sense of mounting dread the inhabitants are witnessing the liquefaction of their city.
Pugliese, a Neapolitan journalist, published Malacqua in 1977 with the support of Italo Calvino. It was an instant best-seller in Italy, but the author inexplicably refused to permit a reprint, and only now after his death has it been reissued, evocatively translated by Shaun Whiteside.
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