Clandestinity

Serial rights targeting The Paris Review, Harper’s, The White Review, The Atlantic, A Public Space Print and digital publicity targeting NPR, The Atlantic, Public Books, The Rumpus, Bookforum, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Literary Hub, Electric Literature, The Guardian, The White Review, Words Without Borders, World Literature Today, Asymptote, A Public Space, and others Promotion at or events pitched for Texas Book Festival, Brooklyn Book Festival, Miami Book Fair, PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature; events and readings pitched to cultural institutions; events and talks pitched to independent bookstores and universities Review copies sent targeting all major print and digital literary media outlets, reviewers, and booksellers; additional copies available upon request Promotion on the publisher’s website (deepvellum.org), Twitter feed (@deepvellum), and Facebook page (/deepvellum); publisher’s e-newsletter to booksellers and reviewers

In this four-story suite, a modern master of Italian literature delves into the wonder and strangeness of the human condition.

Eerie, fabulist, and elegant, each of Moresco’s stories features a central character at a different time of his life: childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood. In these beautiful and unsettling narratives, a dreamlike logic governs a vivid and strange physical world. In “Blue Room,” the adolescent protagonist carries on a voyeuristic relationship with a blind old woman in a mysterious house. In “The Hole,” a young boy becomes fascinated by an outhouse toilet, a portal through which he observes bodily wastes, curiosities, and portents. In the title story, an act of violence deepens the nightmarish tones and mood of disorientation. And in “The King,” a child narrator—who may or may not be present—witnesses a horrific visit from an exiled ruler.

Full of bodily parts, functions, and desires, Moresco’s stories distort time and reality to summon a world of carnal immediacy and uncanny haziness. A spectral and unnerving work of art, expertly translated by Richard Dixon, Clandestinity is a testament to Moresco’s genius.