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An international bestseller and winner of Italy’s prestigious Premio Bancarella prize - an intense psychological thriller in the vein of The Talented Mr. Ripley. As world-weary Lieutenant Chiti spends sleepless nights hunting for the serial rapist terrorizing his city, trainee lawyer Giorgio is befriended by dangerously charismatic Francesco. Slowly the innocent Giorgio is lured into a corrupt world of beautiful women and casual violence. Then one terrifying night Giorgio is forced to realize just how far he has left his past behind.
"The intertwining plot lines build to a haunting ending." - Publishers Weekly
"[Carofiglio] heightens the tension by jumping back and forth in time, revealing a little but not enough to allow us to relax. As Francesco plays Giorgio, so Carofiglio plays the reader." - Booklist
"Former Mafia prosecutor Carofiglio... packs enough psychological suspense into this tightly woven tale to satisfy readers who crave another Barbara Vine or yearn for Georges Simenon's non-Maigret novels." - Library Journal
"Given his career, no reader will come to Carofiglio expecting a tortured moral relativism. Right and wrong never blur, but he does show with sympathy how isolation and insecurity can lead a biddable youngster down into the dark. ... If his prosecutions begin to match his prose, then the capi of Italian crime have had plenty to worry about of late." - The Independent (UK)
This information about The Past Is a Foreign Country was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Photo © Giorgia Carofiglio
Gianrico Carofiglio's books have sold more than five million copies in Italy and have been translated into twenty-seven languages. He is an incredibly charismatic author, having worked for many years as a prosecutor and judge specializing in organized crime and, later, as an Italian senator. He speaks fluent English and his last book was turned into a popular Italian television series.
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