EBOOK Memory of the Abyss

When Samuele Stocchino is two years old the village sage can already see a heart shaped like a wolf&'s head beating in his breast: the heart of a murderer. As a colonial soldier in Northern Africa, recruited from one subject land to subdue another, the sixteen-year-old Stocchino learns to kill before he has learned to love, and it is a skill he hones to perfection on the pitiless battlefields of the Corso Front in the Great War. Returning to Sardinia a hero to a pauper&'s welcome, he finds his family swindled and his sweetheart stolen away by the richest clan in the region, and from one first crime of passion a bitter feud is born. Stocchino terrorizes his wealthy neighbors and anyone who dares to till their land until, with Italy now firmly under Mussolini&'s boot, his elimination becomes Il Duce&'s priority. As he continues to elude capture, the seeds of myth are sown and the legend of Samuele Stocchino is forged. Shrouded by mystery and portent, Memory of the Abyss is a stirring fusion of myth, history and fiction, a daring re-imagining of the true story of a notorious Sardinian bandit and a deft excavation of the island&'s cultural roots by one of Italy&'s most gifted and celebrated writers.