Il cuore è uno zingaro by Luca Bianchini
Tuesday 8 October, 6.30pm, IIC London
Luca Bianchini presents his latest book, published by Mondadori.
Marshal Gino Clemente would have imagined everything but having to move from his beloved Polignano to Bressanone, in South Tyrol, a few kilometres away from Austria, where people speak German and have dinner at 7pm. To try to be part of the South Tyrolean community, he travels by mountain bike, while his inseparable wife Felicetta starts gardening in their new home, with fluctuating results. Their life in the North is made more pleasant by he unexpected return of an old glory of Italian pop music: Gabriel Manero, famous for his only hit, written in 1983 – Todo corazón – which had made them fall in love. The singer, originally from the area although he hasn’t performed there for forty years, is invited for the opening of the Hop House, the brewery run by the very blonde Barbara Kessler, and his concert calls all the inhabitants of the surrounding area together.
It is an opportunity for a dip in the past: many of the attendees know him from the time of the Righeira Brothers, and after the performance he decides to celebrate this reunion in his extravagant villa. Everything seems to be going well but, to everyone’s astonishment, the following morning Gabriel is found dead on the stairs of the house. Is it an accident or not? It will be Marshal Clemente, helped by his wife, his dog Brinkley and his sharp intuition to solve what seems an incomprehensible enigma. Helping him, Brigadier Guglielmotto, a proactive guy form Piemonte with teeth that “can’t be whiter”, and his historic right-hand man Agata De Razza, who consider Bressanone as her home and left a great love there. Between old songs and clues that are difficult to understand, the marshal remains true to himself and discovers the restless and vibrant soul of a town that some call Brixen and that until then had seemed very, very quiet.
Book your place here your
Luca Bianchini is a writer from Turin. He loves to cook while he writes. With Mondadori he has published the novels Instant love (2003), Ti seguo ogni notte (2004), the biography of Eros Ramazzotti, Eros – Lo giuro (2005), Se domani fa bel tempo (2007), Siamo solo amici (2011), Io che amo solo te and La cena di Natale di Io che amo solo te (2013) – from which two films have been made –, Dimmi che credi al destino (2015), Nessuno come noi (2017), brought to the big screen the following year, and S (2018). Among the various activities, the collaboration with the Mangiafuoco broadcast on Rai Radio 1. In 2022 he published Wives are always right, a novel-comedy set in his beloved Polignano, followed in 2024 by Il cuore è uno zingaro (both Mondadori).