The book
Vincenzo Malinconico is a wildly unsuccessful lawyer who spends most of his time at the office trying to look busy. His wife has left him. His teenage children worry him to death. And he suffers from a chronic inability to control his sentence structure.
When he is asked to fill in as the public defender for alleged Mafioso Mimmo lo Burzone, Malinconico seizes the opportunity to turn his life around. Without dwelling too long on what it might mean to be employed by the mob, he rushes to re-learn the Italian criminal code, all the while attempting to resist any further advances from his employers. Malinconico’s life becomes a comical battle to finish what he has started without falling further into the clutches of the mafia.
I Hadn’t Understood is one of the subtlest and most cunning accounts of the mafia’s influence on everyday life in recent decades. And it is certainly the most entertaining. Written with a neurotic’s love of detail and wry humor, I Hadn’t Understood is an engaging story of family, fatherhood, and the perils of navigating the Italian legal system.
The author
Diego De Silva
Diego De Silva was born in Naples in 1964. He is the author of plays, screenplays and six novels. I Hadn’t Understood was a finalist for the Strega Prize, Italy’s most prestigious literary award, and winner of the Naples Prize for fiction. His books have been translated into eight languages. He currently lives in Salerno.
Press
- Sep 26 2013
Idiotllectual: "Written with excessive, neurotic and laborious detail, this is a dazzling read." - Jun 27 2013
World Literature Today: "Mainconico's thoughts...receive an artistic treatment from De Silva's creative and funny turns of phrase." - May 15 2012
Mary Whipple Reviews: "so literate and so intelligent, albeit it completely different from what anyone would expect, that every page is a treasure trove of observations and conclusions – and it is hilariously funny." - Mar 23 2012
New York Journal of Books Review
— New York Journal of Books - Mar 23 2012
Kirkus Reviews: "De Silva has crafted a sharp-edged comedic novel of a semi-hapless Italian lawyer, Vincenzo Malinconico." - Mar 15 2012
Publishers Weekly: "Meet Vincenzo Malinconico...a likable everyman—relatable, but with his own fully human specificity."