Tag-Archive for ◊ corpse-eaters ◊

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• Saturday, June 16th, 2007

Niccolo Ammaniti was born in Rome in 1966. He studied at Liceo Classico and then at university where he read biology. He quitted university before obtaining a degree and decided to breed fish in his bedroom in twelve aquariums containing two thousand litres of water, as a business, in order to earn some money.

Ammaniti wrote his first novel “Branchie” in 1994 and in 1995 published an essay titled “Nel nome del figlio”. In 1996 a collection of short stories called “Fango” came out. As for his great rural novel “Ti prendo e ti porto via” which was written in Scotland during his six months there, it was published in 1999. He then went to the United States in 2001 in order to write the script for an American production called “Gone Bad”. His third novel, “I’m Not Scared” (Io non ho paura) was published in Italy in 2001. Niccolo Ammaniti is the youngest ever winner, at the age of 34, of the prestigious Viareggio-Repaci prize for his novel “I’m Not Scared”, which has been his biggest success so far.

“I’m Not Scared”became a best-seller in Italy for months, and was translated into 20 languages. It was also made into a feature film directed by Gabriele Salvatores, the Academy-award winning director of “Mediterraneo”. It premiered at the Berlin Film Festival in February 2003. Niccolo Ammanity, who lives in Italy, mentioned that he is longing to be a film director, and that his novel “I’m Not Scared” was originally conceived as a film project.

In “I’m Not Scared”a thirty year-old Michele remembers a shocking episode from his childhood in the very hot summer of 1978, twenty years ago in Aqua Traverse, an isolated community living in a hamlet of five houses in the middle of wheat fields, in an unidentified poor region in southern Italy, a nine year-old boy Michele discovers a horrifying secret, unbearable for his age, which is going to change his whole life. He will be thrown into adulthood when he loses his innocence and his faith in the adults around him,and realises that those closest to him are not what he thought they were. And through finding out adult cruelty in kidnapping a child his own age and demanding a ransom from his parents. Michele is put through a dilemma, whether to keep his promise to his father by not going back to see Filippo, or listen to his pure heroic nature. He is helpless and confused as a child and yet courageous and righteous as an adult. The complexity inherent in growing up.Having lost faith in his idealised father and mother and all grown ups surrounding him, he has to work things out by himself and act like a humanitarian hero.

The whole novel is narrated through the nine year-old Michele’s eyes, therefore the language is simple, the sentences short, the paragraphs brief and the image clear, which conveys strength and authenticity to the narration. The author writes with great accuracy the feeling of fear and fantasies of corpse-eaters, ghosts, monsters, and bogeymen that come out at night, which are part of everyday life of a child. Michele is intimidated, like the other children of the hamlet, by Skull (Antonio), who seems to have hold over them through fear and seems to take a sadistic pleasure in ordering his friends around and getting away with it. There is also the fear of Skull’s brother, Felice Natale, who is portrayed as a despicable character.

The story is very well constructed, Michele’s character springs to life while the adults are portrayed in a sketchy way. Ammaniti excelled in capturing with great precision, Michele’s childish thoughts and vocabulary.The story starts in a slow rhythm which conveys the stifling summer heat and also the isolation of the Aqua Traverse people. Nothing much seems to be happening, the children are glad to get together every day to go cycling in the middle of the wheat fields, happily, innocently and without any worries, away from the adults’ evil tension, kidnapping, blackmail and guns. Then comes the black side of the story, the dark black hole opposed to the sunny wheat fields, Michele’s terrible discovery which he keeps to himself. Then follows the tension and violent arguments among the adults which holds the suspense going strong à la Hitchcock, leading to the climax which carries the twist at the end.

Niccolo Ammaniti, a talented story-teller with vivid imagination, is considered one of the best novelists in Italy.

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