The Priest's Hat

<p>The Priest's Hat is a suspenseful moving and darkly funny tale loosely based on Count Alessandro Faella's murder of the priest Virgilio Costa in Imola in 1881. Against the background of late nineteenth-century Naples the novel brings us the meltdown of an aging playboy Carlo Coriolano the last baron of a once-wealthy and powerful clan. </p><p><em>Il Barone</em> has squandered his inheritance and now can't support his extravagant tastes. He's been banned from his club and depends on his loyal long-suffering housekeeper for pocket change. And if he doesn't repay an old loan he'll soon be in jail. His solution is to lure to his crumbling mortgaged ancestral estate a greedy old priest murder him and then take possession of the priest's considerable riches. Of course it all goes wrong and the priest's hat takes us through a mirrored maze of guilt and self-deception as the baron attempts to maintain his equanimity and social position. A precursor of the Italian <em>giallo</em> genre <em>The Priest's Hat </em>was first published in 1887 in installments. Echoing his contemporaries Dostoyevsky and Dickens De Marchi intended this novel as an accessible yet literate exposé of contemporary Italian society with its culture of gossip rumor and superstition; of powerful gangs and clergy; of misleading new philosophies a frivolous inept and corrupt media and an inequitable justice system.</p><p>First modern English translation of <em>Il cappello del prete</em> (1894).</p><p>Introduction and notes. 192 pages.</p><p><br></p>