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The Twenty Days of Turin

Giorgio De Maria,

Ramon Glazov (Translator)

3.75 · Rating details · 1,005 ratings · 174 reviews

In the spare wing of a church-run sanatorium, some zealous youths create "the Library," a space where lonely citizens can read one another’s personal diaries and connect with like-minded souls in "dialogues across the ether." But when their scribblings devolve into the ugliest confessions of the macabre, the Library’s users learn too late that a malicious force has ...more

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Hardcover, 224 pages

Published February 7th 2017 by Liveright (first published 1977)

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Feb 11, 2017 Jack Tripper rated it it was amazing

Shelves: horror, literature, weird, translation

Definitely one of the freakiest and most unsettling novels I've read in a while. Originally published in 1977 by a small Italian publisher and, though a cult classic in Italy, is only just now being released to English-speaking readers.

Turin (in the novel) has a history that its citizens would all like to forget. 10 years ago, the entire city was tormented by twenty sleepless nights, during which incredible, seemingly impossible nighttime murders took place. Throughout this time of widespread Definitely one of the freakiest and most unsettling novels I've read in a while. Originally published in 1977 by a small Italian publisher and, though a cult classic in Italy, is only just now being released to English-speaking readers.

Turin (in the novel) has a history that its citizens would all like to forget. 10 years ago, the entire city was tormented by twenty sleepless nights, during which incredible, seemingly impossible nighttime murders took place. Throughout this time of widespread insomnia, a secret "library" was created in the basement of a sanatorium, a place where people could write "true accounts" of their lives and exchange them with others, for a small fee. It provided the unsociable with a way to be social--sort of a precursor to what social media is today. All that was shut down once the city seemed to go batshit crazy.

But a decade later, one man is determined to get to the bottom of the inexplicable (yet somehow mostly forgotten) phenomena that had all of Turin wracked with terror for weeks, but he finds he has few allies, and there are some shady characters who would rather he'd stop digging around for the truth, one which seems to get stranger and more fantastic the deeper he digs. And he thinks it may be starting to happen again.

The Twenty Days of Turin's non-stop eerieness held me in its grip the entire time, and De Maria's (and the translator's I guess) writing style was an excellent mix of literary and pulp. The slowly unraveling mystery was masterfully executed, imo. I hope you don't mind lots of exclamation marks, though. I don't know if that's the author's pulpier influences shining through, or an Italian thing in general, but I'm used to that sort of thing in classic horror so it didn't bother me.

The entire novel is actually only 144 pages long; the rest is taken up by a short story about Lord Byron, an essay on Italian pop music in the 60s, and a translator's introduction. I haven't gotten to all the extras yet, but will be sure to update this review once I have (I started reading the intro until it seemed to get a little spoilery).

A must for fans of horror and the weird, with some of the creepiest and most disturbing imagery (and "sounds") I've experienced in ages.

5.0 Stars ...more

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Feb 14, 2017 Luca Signorelli rated it it was amazing

Full disclosure here – I'm the person who originally referred this book to Ramon Glazov (the translator) suggesting he should try to have it published.

"The Twenty Days of Turin” is a novel about about fictional darkness, terror and moral confusion, written in a moment (1977) when the real Turin was beginning to live its most traumatic moment since the darkest days of the Nazi occupation (1943-1945), sliding into the grip of an escalation of real life daily political and common violence, in the Full disclosure here – I'm the person who originally referred this book to Ramon Glazov (the translator) suggesting he should try to have it published.

"The Twenty Days of Turin” is a novel about about fictional darkness, terror and moral confusion, written in a moment (1977) when the real Turin was beginning to live its most traumatic moment since the darkest days of the Nazi occupation (1943-1945), sliding into the grip of an escalation of real life daily political and common violence, in the context of a nationwide emergency, the bloody and murky Years of Lead, the still largely undocumented rise of Italian right- and left-wing domestic terrorism. The terrors and horrors of the book are not overtly related to politics. But not seeing the obvious parallels would be dumb.

Set “sometimes around the turn of the XXI century”, in a Turin wrecked by climatic change (one of the many prophetic bits of this book) and the depopulated by the departure of most of the immigrant population, the story is told by a nameless narrator who almost on a whim begins to investigate the “Twenty Days”, a series of grisly murders plus mass psychosis which troubled the city ten years before. The killings, all done with the same bloody modus operandi, happened in some of the city's best known spots, often in full view of hundred of people. As the city was also plagued by a wave of mass insomnia, its streets were roamed by people trying to “find some rest”, but no one could really remember anything, except for vague hints of shadows sliding among the almost catatonic crowds, and the echoes of metallic, grey and threatening cries.

All the while, in a corner of the Piccola Casa della Divina Provvidenza (or Cottolengo, a real-life Turinese religious institution-cum-hospital) a group of mysterious, good mannered young people, created “the Library”, the book's most brilliant and creepy invention. It's a paper version of Facebook, where lonely citizens left their diaries, notes and even random thoughts, open for reading to anyone who fancies it. Beginning as a sort of service for lonely people, the Library quickly becomes an unsavoury obsession, and is daily frequented by hundred of patrons. As the Library's content becomes more and more troubling, and its influence on Turin's inhabitants more sinister, at the height of the “Twenty Days” authorities decided to close it and soon no one admitted to have even used it. Who were the killers? What was the link between the murders, the insomnia and the Library? Soon our investigator begins to sense his own research may lead to trouble. And trouble – of the most unsettling sort – of course happens.

It's difficult to overstate how surprising and even unsettling is to see “The Twenty Days Of Turin” back in print, at least for one of the few people who first read it 40 years ago in the first (and thus far only) Italian release. For 40 years we thought we were the only ones knowing about it, just to discover we were part of a small but ferociously dedicated cult. I know people obsessed enough by this book to make some life choice inspired by it. Some things are difficult to keep down forever. Was it inevitable? When “Twenty Days of Turin” is involved, some question are less silly than they appears.

Turin is by now is one of the most rapidly growing Italian tourist spots, a process beginning after the Winter Olympics of 2006. But for decades, despite its considerable wealth of baroque treasures and important museums (and its closeness to the Alps), it was by far the less known and most enigmatic of all Italian major cities. Curiously, no one of the locals (from old time “true” Turinese to the children of the one million immigrants who arrived here between 1955-1965) ever really complained. Turin was also the Great Italian Incubator, the place where important ideas were born and nurtured, before being exported elsewhere. Commonly cited examples are in fashion and the automotive industry or, the first synthetic filament lamp or the MPEG audio/video standard. But Turin has been, more than anything else, an incubator of opposing ideologies. The modern worker unions vs ruthless modern capitalism, left wing vs right wing radicalism. Nietzsche, Togliatti, Gramsci, Turati, Gobineau and De Maistre, all gravitated here. And while the Years of Lead, the era of Italian domestic terrorism was a nationwide emergency, few would deny Turin was the place who cradle it. By 1977, when the book was released, politically related attacks and even murders where a daily occurrence. Two of them – the grim killing of “La Stampa” deputy editor Carlo Casalegno (first journalist murdered by terrorist for his writings) and the death of Roberto Crescenzio, a young man torched alive during a mass demonstration – haunts the book, despite having happened AFTER the book was written. But with De Maria, prophecy seems the norm, not the exception. In an unproduced short television play he wrote in 1969 for Italian national broadcasting (RAI), people condemned to death can escape their fate if they can demonstrate their charm and personal popularity to a TV jury. RAI was horrified and never produced it, and few suspected what De Maria hinted at (the modern reality show) would become the norm 40 years later.

And of course, the physical and metaphysical darkness. I can't remember one day of that era with a “real” sun shining. Beside industrial pollution (back then a real issue), Turin in 1977 was a city without a real night life. As most of the population worked into the industrial and automotive business, by nightfall streets were completely empty, a sort of self imposed curfew heightened by the de facto embargo on music events imposed on Italy because of terrorism. And the lack of people just made Turin's curious geometry more obvious. The city was almost completely re-built in the Baroque era as a “planned” city following rational considerations, and its grid still nowadays is orthogonal and following the old Roman plan.

De Maria's real stroke of genius of was to project all this - at the “turn of the century”, in a Turin depopulated by an interminable drought and by the collapse of trade and the manufacturing economy. The southern immigrants are gone, and the “true” Turinese are left alone to confront their difficult character and their ghosts. “Turin is a dead city”, says one of the characters. But it's not dead. As usual, it's an incubator, the site of something that may be an experiment. Or something much worse than that.

The other asset of “Twenty Days” is of course De Maria's writing, which shines in Glazov's skilful translation. De Maria was a master of concise prose, and “Twenty Days” - which at heart is truly a horror story – works because of its immensely expert prose. Never too obvious, never too overstated, its ironic and often semi-comedic tone lures you into a false comfort zone, where you will find yourself trapped beyond all help. As I always says, “Twenty Days of Turin” is a cursed book, in the best sense of the word maybe. But still cursed. It may be an elegant, well written horror story. But still a horror story it is, and the names of Lovecraft, Poe and Borges have not been uttered in vain by another reviewer.

“Twenty Days” was De Maria's last book, and shortly after finishing he began a long slide into a serious mental illness, which plagued him (and his family) for the rest of his life. There's much more to say, particularly about the story behind the book's genesis and its eventual rediscovery, almost as creepy and unsettling as the book itself, and only partially covered by Ramon's own informative and exhaustive introduction to this edition. It may be a story for another book. Should “Twenty Days” re-release be a success – a new Italian edition and much else is being prepared – it's not unthinkable this story may be told one day. ...more

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Apr 12, 2017 Nancy Oakes rated it it was amazing

Shelves: translated-fiction, fiction-from-italy, dark-fiction

By the time I'd put this book down, I was actually shaking. Not so much for the horror elements here, but more because of the feeling that this book, while written in the late 1970s, has a certain timeliness about it that terrifies me, one that is more frightening than the contents of any horror novel.

Our guide through this book of strange events in the city of Turin both past and present is an unnamed man who has decided to write a book about the "Twenty Days of Turin

...neither a war nor a By the time I'd put this book down, I was actually shaking. Not so much for the horror elements here, but more because of the feeling that this book, while written in the late 1970s, has a certain timeliness about it that terrifies me, one that is more frightening than the contents of any horror novel.

Our guide through this book of strange events in the city of Turin both past and present is an unnamed man who has decided to write a book about the "Twenty Days of Turin

...neither a war nor a revolution, but as it's claimed, 'a phenomenon of collective psychosis' - with much of that definition implying an epidemic"

and actually, the word "epidemic" seems an appropriate description for what follows as the twenty days are recounted through interviews and other media uncovered by our narrator. It was a time of drought, a time when men and women struggled with a strange insomnia that prompted them to "shamble" through the streets and plazas of Turin during the night. Some witnesses reported strange smells in the air; others were disturbed by unworldly noises, screams that seemed to relay "some kind of message," with "always something gray and metallic deep behind it," ... conveying the "intonation of war cries...virulent and hostile." And then, of course, there were the strange murders that took place during this time, and witnesses who "made certain they didn't see anything." It was as if the city was in the grip of unknown dark forces unleashed by the cosmos itself, blanketing Turin's citizens in terror to the point where, as our narrator discovers, people are still reluctant to discuss their experiences some ten years later. And it is to get "behind that silence" that the narrator seeks to understand exactly who it is that is "hiding the mystery of the Twenty Days."

I see this book in part as an allegory of the fear and upheaval that resulted from Italy's tumultuous "Years of Lead" when, as the translator notes in an interview at Weird Fiction Review

"People were scared of being killed as soon as they stepped out of their houses and also scared that the government wouldn't be on their side,"

and which also became a "taboo-ish topic to speculate about too loudly." On the other hand, I can't get out of my head that since the narrator's real quest is, as he stated, to discover who (or what) it is that is "hiding the mystery of the Twenty Days," it seems to me that a very big part of this book reveals that those strange dark forces responsible for that dark time haven't disappeared, but are still there, lurking and hiding in the shadows, unseen and unknown, but still in control.

De Maria used the stuff and the language of horror fiction to tell an horrific story here, and it works, especially upon reaching the ending which seriously chilled me to the bone. One more thing -- there's been a lot said about this novel's prescience in De Maria's early vision of social media, and it is a big part of this story but don't let that be the only thing you get out of it. There's much, more here -- as just one example, people turning to spirituality (including strange cults) as a sort of bulwark against the darkness, and the translator in his introduction spends a great amount of time helping the reader to understand how the novel can be viewed as an artistic expression of the turmoil of an Italy in its years of great upheaval. But skip the intro until you've finished the novel, so you can experience the chills without any hints first.

I can see why this book is considered a cult classic, and while it may not be for everyone, I thought it was brilliant.

http://www.oddlyweirdfiction.com/2017... ...more

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Mar 20, 2017 Zuky the BookBum rated it liked it

Shelves: 3-stars, 2017

This may seem like an unfair review but I can only give this 3 stars because I didn’t exactly understand it. I think that’s mainly because I’m a little slow to the mark sometimes and because I read this in a distracting environment, but this disappointed me and didn’t scare me like I hoped it would.

It was well written, especially since it’s a translation, but parts of it felt disjointed and I found it hard to follow the uncovering of the Library’s secrets and the cause of the disturbing and ...more

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Feb 12, 2017 Sarah rated it liked it

Shelves: horror, own, fiction, cities-as-people

First of all, can we talk about the cover? Go on, Google "Satan sement l'ivraie," by Felician Rops. I'll wait.

Are you back? What did you think?

I KNOW RIGHT?

Who cares if Satan is marching over Paris and not Turin? THIS IS A GOOD BOOK COVER. GOOD JOB, BOOK COVER DESIGNER WHOSE NAME I FAILED TO NOTE (WHICH ACTUALLY I THINK IS A CRIME BECAUSE BOOK COVERS ARE GREAT).

Moving on.

This edition comes with a lengthy introduction by the translator and one extra short story and an essay by De Maria, all of ...more

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Apr 16, 2017 RB rated it really liked it

Giorgio De Maria wrote this in the late 70's, and now it is presented in English in a slim and pretty unsettling hardcover. The story concerns our unnamed protagonist who is compiling a book on an uncanny event that occurred ten years before. While researching this book, the horrors of the past, that he's studying, begin to manifest around him. He meets some weird blokes, one who has recorded strange sounds on the night, ten years ago, when many were murdered by tall lunatics using other humans ...more

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Oct 28, 2016 Matt Shaqfan rated it liked it

Curious, but occasionally disconnected. The town of Turin has a mysterious and horrific past. Lots of weird, strange, and sometimes disgusting tidbits unfold throughout the book, which is fine and interesting, but some of the puzzle pieces didn’t always seem to fit (the pen pal side-story for instance).

The book kept my attention well enough, and the horrors and clues were spaced out in a way that every time one dropped I had to keep reading to see what sort of answer it lead to.

Hard to say much ...more

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Oct 12, 2017 DeAnna Knippling rated it it was amazing

WOW.

Umberto Eco and Lovecraft had a baby...*

Ten years ago, the grand old museum town of Turin suffered a mysterious series of events stemming from mass insomnia, a public library filled with only the personal, anonymous musings of strangers, and a breakdown in certain areas of the goverment and that led to a horrific, city-wide slaughter. Now the narrator digs into the past, trying to find out what exactly happened back then.

It's bad. Literally worse than I imagined. Weird horror of the best ...more

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Feb 18, 2017 Hil rated it it was ok

Shelves: challenge-2017

Sorry, no. I didn't get it. It wasn't for me. Parts of it were ok, but... No.

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Feb 03, 2018 Bryan Alexander rated it it was amazing

Shelves: gothic, fantasy

A very strange and intriguing novel.

Giorgio De Maria's Twenty Days of Turin is a work of imagined history. Something terrible happened to that Italian city in the 1970s; decades later, our unnamed narrator tries to write a book about it.

I do want to place some thoughts behind spoilers, since part of the book's pleasure is in discovering what happened and how. For now I'll just say that each chapter offers a different slice of the mystery, usually involving meeting a new character and exploring ...more

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Apr 01, 2017 Bogi Takács added it

Shelves: 2017-1st-pub

Very cool, the SFF surprise of my year so far. Very timely (probably even more timely if you are Hungarian, but Americans should also find it timely), very prescient. I'd say it owes a lot to creepypasta, except it massively predates creepypasta. Many people have already said it presages the internet - I'd say especially the social web - and that's true, but those people might not know about CREEPYPASTA in particular. I didn't see that coming!

If you are interested in dark magical realist ...more

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Mar 05, 2017 Ronald rated it really liked it

Shelves: horror-fiction, weird-fiction

The Twenty Days of Turin by Giorgio De Maria
Translator's Introduction by Ramon Glazov

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Type of book: Cosmic horror novel; weird novel
Similiar writers: H.P. Lovecraft, Thomas Ligotti, T.E.D. Kline

_The Twenty Days of Turin_ was first published in Italy in 1977 and published in English in February 2017. This edition also contains a translator's introduction which is well worth reading too. After the novel are two unrelated short pieces: a short story about Lord Bryon which The Twenty Days of Turin by Giorgio De Maria
Translator's Introduction by Ramon Glazov

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Type of book: Cosmic horror novel; weird novel
Similiar writers: H.P. Lovecraft, Thomas Ligotti, T.E.D. Kline

_The Twenty Days of Turin_ was first published in Italy in 1977 and published in English in February 2017. This edition also contains a translator's introduction which is well worth reading too. After the novel are two unrelated short pieces: a short story about Lord Bryon which I found meh, and an essay on 1960s Italian pop music which I found mildly interesting.

The translator's introduction gives the background of the novelist and the times he lived in, and also about Turin. The introduction contributes to the dark atmosphere of the novel:

" IN A FAR-FLUNG CORNER of northwestern Italy, girdled by industrial haze, flanked by a crescent of jagged Alps, stands Turin, grandiose necropolis of a town. Baroque palaces, shaded neoclassical arcades, interwar military monuments and diverse hordes of bronze statues recall a history as the first capital of modern Italy and, in a fuzzier, earlier time, royal capital of the Kingdom of Savoy. It’s a museum city, famous for its eponymous Shroud, its Napoleonic trove of Egyptian tomb treasures, its streets where Nietzsche suffered his tragic mental collapse. At first glance, a quiet museum city— yet museums rarely come without an odor of death, or, in Turin’s case, a whiff of Armageddon. Nicknamed the “City of Black Magic” by its tolerant Italian neighbors, Turin has a long reputation for everything disquieting and spooky. Dozens of bookshops can still be found near its center selling witchcraft manuals, Satanism how-tos, UFO monthlies and the supposed confessions of ex-Illuminati. Walking along the River Po, you’ll see bridge after bridge daubed with bilingual End Times graffiti. (LORD JESUS IS COMING VERY SOON TO SAVE US WITH OUR FAMILIES, one reads, beside IL S. GESU STA ARRIVANDO.) By dread coincidence, Turin has also lent its Italian name to the Torino Scale, used by astronomers to grade the chances that a near-Earth object might “threaten the future of civilization as we know it.”

The narrator, who has a regular job, is doing research for a book on the paranormal events that happened years previously in a twenty day period in Turin. There was a collective psychosis. Individuals couldn't sleep and they went outside at night, where some of them were murdered. Also, a library was created where lonely citizens can read one another’s personal diaries and connect with like-minded souls in "dialogues across the ether."

Our narrator obtains disturbing information about that time. For example, he mets an enthusiast of Fortean phenomenon who made recordings of that time. From the recordings, it seems that something intruded on Turin:

"I pricked up my ears. Now and then, within that strained pageant of voices, I could detect a number of syllables that colluded to form words. And so I could piece together the word “TREE-TRUNK” and then the word “WA-ALL” . . . As I focused harder, I noticed that each noun was preempted by the phrase “I-SPY” . . . You’d hear things like “I-SPY-A-TREE-TRUNK,” or “I-SPY-A-WALL.” They were pure and simple observations, as if, at the pinnacle of their rock-tunneling, their fluid drainage, these entities had gotten to the surface only to find what was right in front of their eyes and describe it in brief jottings. Then one voice, more sullen than the others, completed the sentence, “I-SPY-A-PATH-BE-TWEEN-THE-HOU-SES.” And another voice, equally monotonous, answered, “I-SPY-A-WAY-THROUGH-THE-BUSH-ES.” Gradually, the exchanges of information became more flexible. The muck that was slurped up at every pause seemed to act as a lubricant. But the conversation was still short on adjectives. These were nothing more than rigid descriptions of anything that happened to fall in their field of view. "

Suspense in the story builds: the narrator is under threat. He is being followed. Someone, or something, slammed against the door of the room he was staying in. The narrator and a resident of Turin now think that whatever intruded on Turin years ago is coming back soon.

A good amount of the novel is written in dialogue, which contributes to its informal, highly readable writing style. ...more

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Sep 01, 2016 Adam McPhee rated it it was amazing

Recommended to Adam by: Chapo

Shelves: eldritch, italy

Even those infamous contributions, those dialogues across the ether that were later purged by the Library, helped break that cycle of loneliness in which our citizens were confined. Or rather they helped to furnish the illusion of a relationship with the outside world: a dismal cop-out nourished and centralized by a scornful power bent only on keeping people in their state of continuous isolation. The inventors of the Library knew their trade well!

Foreboding and Lovecraftian.

Filing this Even those infamous contributions, those dialogues across the ether that were later purged by the Library, helped break that cycle of loneliness in which our citizens were confined. Or rather they helped to furnish the illusion of a relationship with the outside world: a dismal cop-out nourished and centralized by a scornful power bent only on keeping people in their state of continuous isolation. The inventors of the Library knew their trade well!

Foreboding and Lovecraftian.

Filing this alongside Schopenhauer's The Art of Always Being Right in the category of 'books about the internet that happen to pre-date the internet'. As the translator Ramon Glazov writes, Without ever mentioning computers, De Maria has predicted the Internet’s evolution better than many cyberpunk novels from the eighties and nineties.

Also included in this slim volume are a short story about two bishops and Lord Byron, and an essay about Italian 'Screamer' music, energetic pop-rock music from Northern Italy in the 60s said to be roughly similar to the music of The Beatles.

LOL wtf: (view spoiler) ...more

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Dec 15, 2016 Digitalice rated it it was amazing

An odd and very compelling story if you are open to depressive hero manque a la Philip K. Dick. There's a lot here in terms of various genres, but it all works. The story took hold of me and never let me go. I felt that strange juvenile excitement of wanting to hurry home to return to it. The writing is crisp, intelligent and it shows more than it tells about the mystery at the heart of this book. I rarely finish novels today, let alone devour them in one or two sessions, but this book bit me ...more

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Mar 22, 2017 Margaux Tatin Blanc added it

I had read this book when I was about twenty years old and it had created such a "folie a deux" with a pal who had loaned me the tex that we took a train to Turin that weekend to explore the places of the novel... I had read it in Italian and that might explain why the English version does not get me that excited about things... Maybe the translation is not as DREAMY as the sound of the Italian was... or maybe i am just not as impressionable... in any case this is still a very strong and bizarre ...more

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Jun 26, 2017 jenni rated it it was ok

Shelves: fiction, europe, italy

Lmao idk

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Mar 25, 2018 Kars rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, weird

Worse, rather than helping its users connect, the Library consumes their privacy in a “web of mutual espionage . . . malicious and futile.”

Replacing a chain of command, we have friendless deviants who prompt equally friendless imitators far away through a sort of perverse quantum entanglement; the atomized lead the atomized.

Those who are unmoving, those who are beyond suspicion—as far as they are inert and familiar—and yet soaked in blood from head to toe, have always found ideal living ...more

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Oct 10, 2018 Drew rated it really liked it

Shelves: octobercountry2018

A strange meditation on terror, like the terrorism kind but lensed through the strange and supernatural. Oddly prescient, or I guess not so much prescient as just evergreen, in its depictions of a world willing to share their stories and a shadowy awful cabal of smiling young men willing to stoke those fires and turn the world against itself. There are moments of true horror to be found here, but just as many eerie oddities -- a building where the stairs have been removed and tenants just toss ...more

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Jun 16, 2018 Waffles rated it it was amazing

Up until the last few chapters I was ready to give this 2.5 stars rounded up to 3 stars. I felt it was too slow and plodding for me at the beginning, but it builds up momentum.

There are parts reminded me of some of the more exotic Thomas Ligotti stories (e.g. The Strange Design of Master Rignollo ... ).

I could imagine Fellini or Bergman directing a script based on this work.

The ending reminded me that I need to reread Dino Buzzati.

If you are not used to reading literary horror where there is ...more

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Feb 17, 2017 Cindy rated it really liked it

Intertwining the present and the past, Giorgio De Maria's cult novel of societal breakdown, The Twenty Days of Turin, appears in English for the first time, smartly translated by Australian writer Ramon Glazov. A nameless office worker is obsessed with events of a decade earlier, when a mysterious collective created a secret and ultimately dangerous library. Ominous messages and suspicious activity convince the narrator that the same forces are regrouping. "A business we believed was over and ...more

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Dec 09, 2017 Peter K. rated it really liked it

An excellent slow burn sort of horror. De Maria gives you just enough to worry without ever ruining everything by tearing down the curtain. You're given just a little peak into a richly allegorical, highly symbolic world of despair.

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Aug 02, 2017 Tom Breen rated it really liked it

The author was a friend of Italo Calvino and Umberto Eco, and that gives you sort of an idea of what the novel is: it's weird, spooky, and erudite, capturing the unnamed narrator's efforts to piece together a baffling spate of violence in his native Turin in the mid-70s.

The book, written during Italy's "Years of Lead," the period from the late 1960s to the early 1980s when the country was repeatedly visited by political violence carried out by extremist sects of the left and right, revolves ...more

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Jun 20, 2017 Elle Maruska rated it really liked it

I loved this; atmospheric, amorphous horror DONE RIGHT. You're never given too much; every word is imbued with meaning and the most terrifying scenes are the ones you're made to imagine for yourself. The book has a lot to say about urban living, about history and identity and place--I'm really glad I found this strange and terrifying and wonderful little work.

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Jul 03, 2017 Tony rated it it was amazing

“Did an obscure Italian author really predict social media in 1977?”

I was intrigued to buy “The Twenty Days of Turin” by Giorgio De Maria after an enticing preview by our friends over at the ‘This is Horror’ site. After then discovering an absolutely fascinating interview with the translator Ramon Glazov over at the ‘Weird Fiction Review’ I was sold – hook, line, and sinker.

I’ve been around weird fiction for more years that I can remember and I cannot ever remember hearing of “The Twenty Days “Did an obscure Italian author really predict social media in 1977?”

I was intrigued to buy “The Twenty Days of Turin” by Giorgio De Maria after an enticing preview by our friends over at the ‘This is Horror’ site. After then discovering an absolutely fascinating interview with the translator Ramon Glazov over at the ‘Weird Fiction Review’ I was sold – hook, line, and sinker.

I’ve been around weird fiction for more years that I can remember and I cannot ever remember hearing of “The Twenty Days of Turin” which has just been published in English and in the USA for the first time in May 2017. A mere forty years after its first publication in Italy! Yes, you read that right, forty years. An especially long period of time for a book critics are now comparing to Poe, Kafka and Lovecraft…..

There really isn’t much around on the internet about this highly strange novel, which apparently has some sort of cult reputation in Italy. However, I’ve asked a few Italian literature experts I know and nobody has heard or knows much about it. The translator Glazov is somewhat of a Giorgio De Maria expert and his ‘Translator’s Introduction’ is particularly revealing and compliments the novel perfectly. The author himself is a real enigma, and his life had just as many odds twists as the novel itself. You’ll be looking the guy up on Wikipedia in no time.

De Maria only wrote four novels between 1968 and 1977, of which “Twenty Days” was his last. A few years later he became a committed Catholic and never wrote again, dying in 2009 aged 85. Along the way he was a concert piano player, theatre critic, journalist and well known leftish culture vulture.

So what of this truly bizarre novel? An amateur researcher investigates the weird events which have since become known as ‘Twenty Days in Turin’ ten years after the fact. He hopes to write a book on this almost hypnotic psychosis which led to many of the residents of Turin suffering from insomnia and in turn wandering around the streets late at night. Whilst in this forgetful stupor some of them were attacked and murdered by something huge that picks them up by the ankles and bashes them to death against statues and walls. Nobody really knows what caused the deaths, but something supernatural or monstrous is suspected. Ten years later nobody likes to talk about these twenty days and as the bumbling researcher stumbles deeper into something he doesn’t understand and interviews the few suspicious survivors willing to talk to him.

This short 150 page novel has a second major strand which I think has been over hyped and too much has been read into it. But it’s a great way of selling a pretty obscure novel though! Whatever your opinion, it is completely fascinating….. The translator Glazov argues that the novel seemed to predict, forty years in advance, the creation of Facebook, blogging and other areas of social media. How is this possible? This second story strand features ‘The Library’, a place where citizens could for a fee store (or donate) their personal writings or musings. These thoughts must be personal in nature and describe themselves. At the same time they are welcome to read the biographies and thoughts left by others. And for a nominal fee, they will be provided with the contact information of any of the authors, should they want to get in contact and have further communication. Sound familiar? Even William Gibson and other early steam-punk pioneers came this close to nailing social media as this idea does.

Thing blogs…. Think Facebook posts….. Think of online stalking….. Think of buying information about someone online…. Think of internet trolls….. Thing of posting stuff and then never being able to delete it….. In one shape or form all these ideas are present in “Twenty Days”. Users of ‘The Library’ must only present unpublished work and have to pay to find out personal details of others they are interested in (buying personal details?) and eventually the equivalent of the Dark Net takes over and people just post nasty troll like stuff, there may of course be a demonic force at work.

Although I enjoyed this book I think the reviews and blurbs have sold it to be more than it is and some readers may be a tad underwhelmed by it. Much of it is very obscure, you’re wandering in a labyrinth wondering what the hell is going on. However, it has got some incredibly unsettling scenes as the unnamed researcher digs deeper into the mystery. Apart from the quaint old tape recording equipment the novel has aged really well, but I wonder whether the crash, bang, quick fit generation will have the patience for it? Personally I enjoyed the intellectual challenge of it, but it will not be to all tastes.

Is it a horror novel? Most definitely, a very literary example which also messes with Magical Realism. It’s claustrophobic, nightmarish, with a very dark take on religion with unsettling twists. It’s laced with paranoia, layered with symbolism, and the unnamed narrator slowly begins to wonder whether he is being played…. It messes with his head and this challenging freaky novel may well mess with yours also.
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Oct 18, 2017 Dawnelle Wilkie rated it it was amazing

Shelves: fiction, favorites-2017

Creepy, delightful, and disturbing. Plus! Sinister nuns and early (1977, yes really!) warnings about the potential dangers of social media.

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Jan 08, 2018 Jim Elkins added it

Shelves: italian

An unusual tourist's guide to Turin

This is just a short note to register I've read this. It isn't the kind of book I usually read: even though it was written in the 1970s, it is in the line of H.P. Lovecraft: it conjures its terrors with set-pieces (a strange old woman's narration, a zealously guarded vault full of moldy papers, streets with inexplicable happenings, special radio recordings of incomprehensible voices, solitary witnesses to horrific events, and so forth). Readers are supposed to An unusual tourist's guide to Turin

This is just a short note to register I've read this. It isn't the kind of book I usually read: even though it was written in the 1970s, it is in the line of H.P. Lovecraft: it conjures its terrors with set-pieces (a strange old woman's narration, a zealously guarded vault full of moldy papers, streets with inexplicable happenings, special radio recordings of incomprehensible voices, solitary witnesses to horrific events, and so forth). Readers are supposed to be drawn in by those prefaces and invitations. I find myself thinking about the author, who experiences fright as something that happens only when it appears, supposedly unexpectedly, after a series of curtain-raisings and changes of scene. de Maria works hard to prepare us for moments of horror that are, in the end, often pre-ordained by the scenes he's staged for us. There are only a few real surprises, and they have to do with rude or obscene episodes that seem out of place in the machinery of fin-de-siecle storytelling: a woman who is constipated and wants a massage; an old man who advertises for young girls. The rest is familiar from early 20th century fantasy and genre fiction, comics, and movies. It's entirely appropriate that de Maria chose a picture by Felicien Rops for his cover (here reproduced in negative, I suppose to make it look more frightening).

However, there is a good reason to read this book: it's a wonderful snapshot of Turin, and specifically a certain moment in the 1970s, when there were threats of terrorism. The book is "out of time," but the idea of threat is everywhere. Turin is conjured through its public sculpture; the statues are named and brought into the story. You could use the book as a Baedecker: you'd go from one piazza to the next, looking at the statues everyone overlooks, pondering their pervasive effect on people's thoughts. de Maria was serious about the city and its statues; he even has a character in the novel read Musil's piece on the invisibility of monuments from "Posthumous Papers of a Living Author."

(And yet -- for a much better novel of a haunted city, try Alfred Kubin's "The Other Side." Kubin's visual art was of a piece with de Maria's imagination -- and his choice of Rops -- but Kubin's book is full of the sort of the less predictable, endless strangeness we now associate with Kafka.) ...more

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Jul 04, 2017 Robert Rich rated it liked it

Shelves: f-dark

English translation of an Italian novel written in the late 1970s. It gained cult classic status in Italy for offering on-point commentary of the so-called "Days of Lead" in the country at the time, a period marked by constant terror attacks and a cropping fear throughout the country. One could argue that makes it relevant today as well, but it's really nothing more than an eerie, atmospheric thriller, full of strange happenings and witnesses who give mysterious comments to the narrator ...more

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Jun 15, 2017 Greg rated it liked it

THE TWENTY DAYS OF TURIN evokes a creepy dystopic world that is also uncannily contemporary. People chronically overshare using a crude social media platform and terrorism prevails. Whether these two vices are directly linked in the novel or, indeed, in our world today remain unclear. The novel was intended as an allegory for the violence and fear that were prevalent in highly polarized Italian society during the 70’s, a time known as the “Years of Lead.”

De Maria evokes a “library” where people THE TWENTY DAYS OF TURIN evokes a creepy dystopic world that is also uncannily contemporary. People chronically overshare using a crude social media platform and terrorism prevails. Whether these two vices are directly linked in the novel or, indeed, in our world today remain unclear. The novel was intended as an allegory for the violence and fear that were prevalent in highly polarized Italian society during the 70’s, a time known as the “Years of Lead.”

De Maria evokes a “library” where people can deposit their personal diaries and connect with like-minded souls. Not unlike the social media platforms of today, this proves to be problematic. Although the idea sounds appealing, the library also contained much vile and hateful rhetoric. De Maria emphasizes his point by housing his library in a charity hospital for the insane and having it endorsed by the Church.

Turin experiences 20 days of extreme and random violence following the death of Giovanni Bergesio, a bank employee. Insomnia was highly prevalent during this time and violent mobs roam the streets at night. De Maria never points to the library as the source of all the unrest, but its patrons seemed to be common among the insomniacs and the victims of violence while the perpetrators may have been right-wing neofascists.

The narrator is an unnamed amateur sleuth who seeks to find the truth behind the strange happenings that occurred in Turin a decade previously. His investigation consist mainly of interviews with people who lived through the 20 days of “collective psychosis." These people attest to much weirdness, including moving statues, terrifying screams, and strange foul odors. Throughout, the narrator has feelings of being watched. This may be more than just paranoia since he seems to believe that neofascists may have been responsible for both the library and the brutal murders of the insomniacs. In the final analysis, his of unrest drive him to abandon his investigation and leave Turin.

Despite its status as a cult classic, this novel has many flaws. De Maria clearly sees fascism as a threat and much of his symbolism in that regard lacks subtlety. None of the characters, including the narrator, are well fleshed out. The story is so bizarre that it cries out for more explanation than De Maria provides. And his intentions seem obscure: Should people be more careful about sharing their most personal information with strangers? Does this lead to violence and hate? On the other hand, De Maria masterfully evokes Turin and its inhabitants adding to the spooky feeling that pervades the novel. The place is isolated from much of the rest of the country and has a history of occultism. Turinese are well-mannered but private. Many of the interviewees seemed circumspect and even evasive. The attorney describes the setting best: “Perhaps because we’re an isolated city, out of the international time stream, where certain experiments can be carried out without drawing too much attention.”
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Dec 15, 2017 Carmilla Voiez rated it it was amazing

Originally published in the 1970s and recently translated into English, Girogio de Maria’s short novel “The Twenty Days of Turin” is remarkable in the way it mirrors society in the twenty-first century. It is a dark read, straddling the line between horror and magical realism, that combines religion, isolation, paranoia and monsters both human and ones which might well have inspired the Weeping Angels of Doctor Who.

Within an abandoned wing of a former insane asylum, a library is established Originally published in the 1970s and recently translated into English, Girogio de Maria’s short novel “The Twenty Days of Turin” is remarkable in the way it mirrors society in the twenty-first century. It is a dark read, straddling the line between horror and magical realism, that combines religion, isolation, paranoia and monsters both human and ones which might well have inspired the Weeping Angels of Doctor Who.

Within an abandoned wing of a former insane asylum, a library is established unlike any other, allowing in its collection only "true, authentic documents reflecting the real spirit of the people”. Citizens of Turin can deposit their personal diaries and thoughts in the hope that others will read them, understand and connect with the writer, and in so doing cure the writer of their existential loneliness. I doubt I need to comment on the similarities of purpose between this library and Live Journal or Facebook. To those of us who engage in social media, it is probably no shocking revelation that the diaries and their contents become steadily more disturbed and perverted the more people rely on the library’s services, as if desperate to out do each other in terms of honesty and deviance.

The writers pay a price for baring their souls before their neighbours in this way, for they do not know who has read what they have written, or what those readers might think of them. The writers spiral into paranoia and insomnia, and the feelings of being constantly observed are rife among them.

In addition to the paranoia that succeeds this over-sharing, the writers are left drained. In purging themselves of their darkest secrets they do not make room for something better but are left empty, like dry riverbeds. As the story progresses it seems that something has been nourished by the effluence. Not only are sleepless husks doomed to wander the plazas of Turin by night, haunted by an undefined vinegary smell, but they wake dark forces that use these readily available human bodies as weapons to war with each other over territory.

Ten years later, the same clean-cut and overly-positive cultish figures remain at the location of the since closed library, and the narrator perceives a connection between the faux-wholesome figures and the evil powers unleashed before and waiting to be unleashed again. These people seem omnipresent as the narrator wanders the city, investigating the Twenty Days and its connection to the library. If there was a purpose to the violence other than bloodshed, the narrator does not uncover it, and perhaps this is the most unsettling aspect of the book. The violence is mindless, just like the sleepwalkers and the warring statues.

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Apr 26, 2017 C rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorite, good-reads-giveaways

"Can you point to anything more permanent, anything harder to suspect, than those murderers?" Any fans of the weird literature should flock to this book. I'm definitely a fan! Collective psychosis and insomnia fall on the people of Turin, Italy possibly due to the paranoia revolving around a community Library of diaries (this sounds like a premonition of the internet and cellphones giving everyone paranoia and insomnia)... and then the book gets much weirder. Published in 1977 and newly ...more

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“Small wonder, then, that an institution like the Library found space to take root. It was presented as a good cause, created in the hope of encouraging people to be more open with one another. Its creators were little more than boys: perky, smiling youngsters, well groomed and well dressed, without a trace of facial hair. They looked designed to win people's trust. And who wouldn't trust a cheerful, articulate young man who came calling at your door, inviting you to chat with him about this and that, about the meaning of life, about all the hunger and suffering in the world? It's true; it was whispered that dark forces acted behind them, national and international groups hungry for vengeance after certain recent defeats. But who could believe such things in front of polite young lads who always looked you in the eyes and shook your hand.” — 1 likes

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