Luigi Musolino
Uironda

Luigi Musolino is the best Italian horror writer: few other authors manage to evoke, from a realistic context, the ancestral and irrational fears that inhabit our psyche. Musolino delves into our unconscious, managing to bring to light the abysses of darkness that lie hidden there.
Those who follow the Italian horror-weird scene will certainly have already had a chance to appreciate his qualities: his story Nere colline del supplizio which won the Premio Hypnos is a small weird masterpiece with dark and unsettling atmospheres. He also has behind him 2 collections of horror stories, namely Oscure regioni and Oscure regioni 2 which explore the traditions of Italian “popular” folklore. I also recall the long story Nelle crepe published by Vincent Books. Recently, he has refined his style with the splendid anthology released by Hypnos titled Un buio diverso and reviewed by me here on DeBaser.

Certainly worth remembering is also Uironda, an anthology released by Kipple Officina Libraria in 2019. This is a collection containing 10 top-level stories that confirm the talent of the Piedmontese writer. The opening story L’isola e l’abisso has an exotic setting where a group of castaways off Sri Lanka will find refuge on a living island, a true manifestation of a nameless deity. In the following Acido lattico fear comes from an imperceptible and unsettling change in the landscape, specifically the Piedmontese countryside, which will lead the protagonist to explore another and darker reality. Njambi (Traversate) takes us to explore the horrors – in the form of resurrected children's corpses – brought to light by the sea on the route crossed by migrants to reach Sicily: the effect is truly terrifying. The aforementioned Nere colline del supplizio is very powerful: suddenly the village of Orlasco is surrounded by mysterious jet-black hills symbolizing a primal Evil, a sort of incomprehensible Void and unknowable to man. The story that gives the title to this anthology, Uironda , narrates the story of a truck driver who will find himself entering an unknown region.

As Andrea Vaccaro wrote well in the introduction, Uironda represents “a boundary, a boundary between light and darkness, between the known and the unknown”. In “Formiche” a sort of “entomological” horror is described: it seems that the author has a certain interest in the subject as elsewhere he often mentions stag beetles. Perhaps the pinnacle of Uironda is represented by Il terzo piano e mezzo della scala D, a long story set in a grim and gray condominium as many are seen: in the dark and squalid recesses of the building, where outcast and derelict humanity lurks, some kids – reminiscent of IT by Stephen King” –, during their games, will access another dimension of reality. The ending, in which one of the children remains trapped in this alternative reality, is beautiful, very powerful, and dreamlike. The closure is entrusted to Nelle crepe justly re-proposed here, given its quality, after the Vincent Books edition: it is a story that reads in one breath and where the tension never wanes. It tells of the old man Giaco and the horrors hidden in the run-down Turin neighborhood called Rosella. Suddenly cracks appear in Giaco's apartment, extending even outside, leading to a dilapidated deconsecrated church where an abyss inhabited by a mysterious entity, perhaps a pre-Christian deity demanding sacrifices to continue living, lies hidden. A kind of pseudobiblion also makes its appearance, namely the “Scienza del Necromilieu,” then also taken up in Un buio diverso. The story thus narrates ancient malevolent entities with something Lovecraftian about them.

Uironda is a volume that absolutely should not be missing from the shelves of anyone who follows Italian horror, but not only.