The City of the Living: The True Story of Modern Rome’s Most Shocking Murder Book Review
We’re all afraid of being in the victim’s shoes. We live in terror of being robbed, deceived, attacked, trampled. It’s more difficult to fear the contrary. We pray God or fate not to find a murderer on the street. But what emotional obstacle do we have to overcome to imagine that it could be us, one day, in the murderer’s shoes?
It’s always: Please, let it not happen to me. Never: Please, let it not be me who does it.
Synopsis
A spellbinding, best-selling work of true crime about one of the most shocking murders in recent Italian history and set in a Rome that will be a constant revelation to anyone who knows only the city’s well-worn tourist paths.
In March 2016, in a nondescript apartment on the outskirts of Rome, Manuel Foffo and Marco Prato, two “ordinary” young men from good families, brutally murdered twenty-three year old Luca Varani. News of the seemingly inexplicable crime sent shockwaves through Rome and beyond. What motivated such extreme violence? Were the killers evil or in the grip of societal evils? Did they know what they were doing? Or were they possessed? And if the latter, possessed by what?
Going beyond anything that has ever been written on the crime, based on months of interviews, court documentation, and correspondence with the killers themselves, The City of the Living not only reads like a fast-paced, revelatory thriller in the style of Lisa Taddeo’s Animal but is also a descent into the dark heart of Rome—a city plagued by corruption, drugs, hidden violence that sometimes erupts.
Nicola Lagioia leads us through a maze of betrayed expectations, sexual confusion, inability to grow up, economic grievances, crises of identity—progressively tightening the focus of the analysis to locate the point after which anything is possible. As hypnotic as Erik Larson’s Devil in the White City, an heir to Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, The City of the Living is Nicola Lagioia’s most gripping, bestselling, and critically acclaimed book to-date, the story not only of a crime but of a society and the human natures that make such a crime possible.
REVIEW
Nicola Lagioia’s The City of the Living: The True Story of Modern Rome’s Most Shocking Murder is a literary true crime novel based on a 2016 murder in Rome with seemingly no motivation. While an interesting story, it was not quite literary enough nor quite factually detailed enough for me to really feel completely satisfied with the narrative, though it did find a sort of perfect equilibrium in the latter chapters. Furthermore, I appreciated the different, and particular, lens that this case—and Rome as a whole—was viewed and analyzed through. Indeed, this book is unique in the way the author interprets the concrete and the abstract—a tough thing to approach and balance, even more so given the context of real, and horrifying, events such as true crime . . . most especially a reprehensible murder.
I applaud Lagioia for his work and am gratified to have read it.
Content warnings include murder, violence, manipulation, homophobia, drug use, and alcoholism.
Original publication date was 3 October 2023.
Author Profile
Nicola Lagioia is an Italian writer.
Born in Bari, Lagioia debuted as a novelist in 2001 with Tre sistemi per sbarazzarsi di Tolstoj (senza risparmiare se stessi). With his novel Riportando tutto a casa he won several awards, including the 2010 Viareggio Prize. In 2013 and in 2014, he was among the film selectors of the Venice International Film Festival. In 2015, he won the Strega Prize with the novel La ferocia (a.k.a. “The ferocity“).
TL;DR
- Rating: 3.5 stars | Genre: Literary True Crime | Pages: 432
- Based on a 2016 murder in Rome with seemingly no motivation
- Appreciated the lens this case (and Rome) was viewed and analyzed through
- Author uniquely interprets the concrete and the abstract
- CWs: murder, violence, manipulation, homophobia, drug use, and alcoholism
