Concealment and irony in the shadow of the Mole: Fruttero and Lucentini in "A che punto è la notte"

Abstract

In the Turin of the late seventies, Fruttero and Lucentini depicted a city shrouded in darkness, a winter metropolis where snow seemed to blur the lines between the old, conservative, and esteemed Savoy capital and the burgeoning industrial hub of the economic boom. Through the critical and disillusioned lens of these two inherently Turin authors (one by birth, the other by adoption), a rich tapestry of names and places emerged, blending reality with invention to either obscure or highlight, with an unexpected touch of irony, the cityscape and its inhabitants. The murder of a priest in a church is juxtaposed with elements of genuine comedy, particularly in their clever manipulation of proper names.