Marcello Fois
Dura Madre

The first light of dawn illuminates a bleak February morning.

The lifeless body of Raffale Marongiu lies in a pool of blood on the outskirts of the city, a treacherous and violent Nuoro which, under the apparent calm and the petit-bourgeois veneer of what has been called the Athens of Sardinia, hides a criminal underworld of anonymous packages, secret societies, and forged accounts, where the underground clash betrays the disconnection of the social fabric.

In the midst of this shaky stage moves Commissioner Angelo Sanuti from Rimini, a foreigner in a foreign land, tormented by the mistral wind and a burdensome past lurking in the shadows. Coming to his aid, to understand a cold and hostile local reality, made of silences and innuendos, are Judge Corona and especially the retired marshal Pili, who will guide Sanuti towards the truth.

A truth that, as the author writes, “reveals itself in bits, like an inexperienced stripper, somewhat clumsy,” and goes beyond the mere resolution of the investigation to project this small noir story towards a ruthless analysis of contemporary society in which, despite themselves, the book's characters live their hopeless lives in the background.

Just as Pasolini's boys of life were transformed into ruthless and evil slum dwellers, so too in Fois’s Nuoro, money has upended and unsettled a community in uncontrolled growth, at times reaching towards the future, at times still tied to an anachronistic past, where revenge, like a fruit finally ripe, is always an opportunity to be seized.

In this inevitably dark tableau, the author gives the reader a remote lifeline in a few small cruel compasses, scattered along the path, called What We Have Always Known, useful for navigating a world of silent looks, dwarfs and giants, proverbs and parables which it is neither prudent nor wise to scrutinize closely.

"We know that knowledge is not of this world. And that explanations are voices, local voices. They are the songs of a choir that modulates to the four winds. We know that the whole truth is on everyone’s lips".

First edition: Marcello Fois, “Dura madre,” Einaudi, Turin, 2001