Lorenza Foschini – författare

“A rare and wonderfully written book of literary detection that is heartbreaking as well as thrilling.”—Michael Ondaatje, author of The English Patient

In the tradition of Simon Winchester’s The Professor and the Madman comes Proust’s Overcoat by Lorenza Foschini—the charming, endlessly intriguing story of a collector’s obsessive search for the personal effects of legendary author Marcel Proust. This fascinating true story introduces readers to a truly delightful character—Jacques Guérin, owner of a perfume company in France—and enthralls them with his relentless lifelong pursuit of all things Proustian, even the author’s most mundane possessions.

Naples, May 8, 1959. Renato Caccioppoli, a mathematical genius, prodigious pianist, captivating storyteller, highly cultured and multilingual, believed to be the grandson of the anarchist movement founder Mikhail Bakunin, takes his own life by shooting himself in the back of the head in his residence at Palazzo Cellammare.

Adored by students and colleagues, a symbol of freedom and non-conformity for an entire generation, Caccioppoli enchanted not only some of the most celebrated intellectuals of the century – André Gide, Pablo Neruda, Eduardo De Filippo, Benedetto Croce, Alberto Moravia, Elsa Morante – but also, and above all, the people of Naples, who have always regarded him with amazed admiration. Persecuted by the fascist regime, afflicted by what the writer and friend Paola Masino would describe as "the friction of life," his death permanently places him in the city''s history.

This meticulous and well-documented investigation tells us who Caccioppoli truly was and offers us an un-stereotyped and, in some ways, unprecedented portrayal of a legendary Naples.