Alessandro Piperno was born in Rome in 1972. His 2005 novel, The Worst Intentions, won the Campiello Prize for First Novel and became an instant bestseller in Italy, where Corriere della sera described its author as “a new Marcel Proust.” The New Yorker wrote that The Worst Intentions was a “wickedly scathing début, a coruscating mixture of satire, family epic, Proustian meditation, and erotomaniacal farce.” Piperno is the author of two works of non-fiction. Persecution, the first installment of a diptych entitled The Friendly Fire of Memories, is his long-awaited second novel.
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Alessandro Piperno
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From the very first page of Alessandro Piperno’s second novel, you know that dark times will deluge Leo Pontecorvo, an eminent paediatric oncologist: a family dinner at his stylish Roman villa is besmirched by a TV news item, insinuating that this dashing Jewish saviour...— Feb 1 2013![]()
Persecution, the title of Alessandro Piperno’s scorchingly ambitious second novel, is not a straightforward label for the catastrophe that befalls the protagonist, Leo Pontecorvo. It is, however, the one he would sincerely use. A distinguished pediatric oncologist and university...— Oct 5 2012![]()
"Why it says to the world what the world wants to hear: that nothing goes better with depravity than vanity,” claims the narrator of Persecution. Like the author’s debut, The Worst Intentions, the vanity of the Italian bourgeoisie, this time set in the 1980s, is the subject...— Aug 30 2012![]()
"Why it says to the world what the world wants to hear: that nothing goes better with depravity than vanity,” claims the narrator of Persecution. Like the author’s debut, The Worst Intentions, the vanity of the Italian bourgeoisie, this time set in the 1980s, is the subject...— Aug 30 2012
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