Every coincidence has a soul

A new, charming literary character, a modern-day unemployed person who soothes people’s mental or physical ailments by recommending the right books. And so, in a way, novels, short stories and poetry cease to be mere paper written in ink and are transformed into therapies, medicines, and even investigative tools that shed light on dark crimes. Vince Corso, the spitting image of Gérard Depardieu, is an unemployed professor, the product of his mother’s fleeting affair with an unknown traveller. The only memento he has of his father is three books left behind in a hotel room: a legacy that has shaped his life. To survive, he turns to bibliotherapy as a profession. But when he discovers that his neighbour, an avid reader, has disappeared, Vince begins to study the woman’s life through the books she read, convinced that with her disappearance she is writing a story that only he can decipher. Vince strengthens his belief (and with him, that of the readers) in literature as an indispensable tool of knowledge. ―Ernesto Ferrero, La Stampa

An unemployed professor and a reader like few others, Vince Corso comes up with a new profession for himself: that of a book therapist. He rents an attic in the centre of Rome, where he receives his patients and finds them the right book to soothe their mental—and, why not, their physical—pain. One day, she is visited by sixty-year-old Giovanna. Her brother, a sinologist with a passion for foreign languages, a voracious reader and book collector, suffers from Alzheimer’s and obsessively repeats a few scattered, incoherent phrases. The woman is certain that these phrases belong to a book which, if found, could help her brother. Vince sets out on his quest through new places, people and paths in the city and in literature, with one question weighing on his mind: if he were to lose everything and could save just one memory, which one would it be? A riveting novel about memory, the significance of memories, and the search for the dividing line between the Tower of Babel of reality and literature.

In the life of Vince Corso, an unemployed philologist forced to earn a living as a book therapist, everything is turned upside down from one day to the next. Strangers break into his home, destroy his vinyl records and books, and poison his beloved dog, Django. Vince finds himself caught up in a dizzying whirlwind of mystery and murder, caught in a dark web that pulls the strings of his thoughts and his life, leading him through a weary, decadent Rome to chase ghosts, including his own shadow. A new adventure with a darker edge this time for the bibliotherapist Vince Corso, an enigma that, through dark twists and turns, compels him to question just how threatening yet how redemptive the power of words can be. A meta-literary novel exploring the boundaries between fiction and reality. Do they even exist? [Read what Dimitra Dotsi wrote on our blog about the translation of the book.](https://ikarosbooks.gr/blog/dimitra-dotsi-metafrazontas-to-skotono-opion-thelo-tou-fabio-stassi)

Mastro-Geppetto, elderly and all alone, is slowly losing his memory and his speech. His fellow villagers, cruel and heartless, take him for a madman and play a cruel prank on him: they make him believe that a log they give him is magical. Thus begins the ordeal of old Geppetto, who tries to breathe life into the lifeless wood, transforming it into a little boy, Pinocchio. Fabio Stassi subverts the famous work of Italian literature and, stripping it of all its fairy-tale elements, transports it into a realistic reality. With Mastro-Geppetto, he presents us with the gripping story of a man who is not merely searching for his son, but is struggling against a closed, hostile society that allows him neither to love nor to continue hoping. A literary gem of creativity and inspiration, which in 2022 won over audiences and critics alike, and was honoured with the Dessì, Benedetto Croce and Stresa awards. [Read what Dimitra Dotsi wrote on our blog about the translation of the book.](https://ikarosbooks.gr/blog/dimitra-dotsi-metafrazontas-to-mastro-tzepeto-tou-fabio-stassi)

Vince Corso, a bibliotherapist and researcher of literary mysteries, having boarded the wrong train, happens to meet a cultured, enigmatic man who bears a resemblance to the anarchist troubadour Leo Ferré. Following him, he continues his journey to Genoa and then to the Côte d’Azur. Amidst shabby guesthouses and Art Nouveau hotels, amidst the verses of poets and people carrying a wealth of stories on their backs, he will seek his own, attempting to discover the identity of a father he never knew, in the most important quest of his life. Night in France is a night full of light. A story full of mistakes, chance events, unexpected encounters, labyrinths and people seeking a safe haven. A novel about what it means to leave people and things behind, but also to defy everything in order to find them (again). A little literary gem. Raw, charming, refreshing. ―La Stampa [Read what Dimitra Dotsi wrote on our blog about the translation of the book.](https://ikarosbooks.gr/blog/dimitra-dotsi-metafrazontas-to-nichterino-sti-gallia-tou-fabio-stassi)