Prima di dirti addio

"Yes, absolutely – this character is a perfect character for exploring how things work on the individual level as well as in a group. But to make a broader point about these books, one of Italy’s problems is that there are no more [journalistic] investigations into crime – that is to say, citizens no longer have the right to read punctual, in-depth accounts of the criminal individuals and activities which shape their lives. So a novel of this type, born from very specific circumstances, allows them to see inside their own reality. The name Sabot comes from the French word for the clogs which, during the industrial revolution, workers would chuck at the machines to slow them down when they couldn’t keep up with the pace of production. When they were tired and just couldn’t go on, they would throw their clog into the cogs of the machine as a protest. We, as writers, throw our clog at a machine of information that has ceased to inform us. We want to tell the stories which are ignored by the machine and which are harder to come by. These writers have, on the one hand, learned the ways of the novel—be it noir, police, thriller etc—and on the other, they have educated themselves in the ways of investigative criminal journalism. The work is thus a novel/investigation in which, instead of plucking inspiration from his own imagination, authors like Pulixi pluck it from real, evidential life."