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Cocaine (Paperback)
Pitigrilli; Translated by Eric Mosbacher; Afterword by Alexander Stille
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R407
R352
Discovery Miles 3 520
Save R55 (14%)
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Ships in 12 - 17 working days
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Cocaine is the story of a young man who runs off to Paris to seek
fame, fortune, and fun. Pitigrilli's classic novel charts the
comedy and pathos of a young man's tragic trajectory. Tito Arnaudi
is a dandified hero with several mistresses he juggles. A failed
medical student, Tito is hired as a journalist in Paris, where he
investigates cocaine dens and invents lurid scandals and gruesome
deaths that he sells to newspapers as his own life becomes more
outrageous than his phony press reports. Telling of orgies and
strawberries soaked in champagne and ether, Tito lives with
intensity as he pursues his Italian girlfriend Maud (nee Maddalena)
and wealthy Armenian Kalantan, who insists on making love in a
black coffin. Provocatively illustrated, filled with lush,
intoxicating prose, Cocaine is a wicked novel about the Lost
Generation in 1920s Paris. Dizzy and decadent, Pitigrilli leaves
nothing unexplored as he presents astonishing descriptions of upper
class debauching -- strawberries and chloroform, naked dancing,
cocaine aplenty, and guests openly injecting morphine. Despite its
wit, Cocaine is a sobering account of the dangers of drugs and
sexual obsession. Tito happily trades in his twilight years for
moments of wicked ecstasy.
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Cocaine (Paperback)
Pitigrilli; Translated by Eric Mosbacher; Afterword by Alexander Stille
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R408
R383
Discovery Miles 3 830
Save R25 (6%)
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Ships in 12 - 17 working days
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Named Library Journal Best Fiction in Translation 2013. "Cocaine is
a brilliant black comedy that belongs on the same shelf as Evelyn
Waugh's Vile Bodies and Dawn Powell's The Wicked Pavilion.
Pitigrilli is an acidic aphorist and a wicked observer of social
folly."--Jay McInerney, author of Bright Lights, Big City and
Brightness Falls "Pitigrilli was an enjoyable writer--spicy and
rapid--like lightning."--Umberto Eco "The name of the author
Pitigrilli ...is so well known in Italy as to be almost a byword
for 'naughtiness' ...The only wonder to us is that some
enterprising translator did not render some of his books available
in English sooner." -- The New York Times, Paris in the
1920s--dizzy and decadent. Where a young man can make a fortune
with his wits ...unless he is led into temptation. Cocaine's
dandified hero Tito Arnaudi invents lurid scandals and gruesome
deaths, and sells these stories to the newspapers. But his own life
becomes even more outrageous than his press reports when he
acquires three demanding mistresses. Elegant, witty, and wicked,
Pitigrilli's classic novel was first published in Italian in 1921
and charts the comedy and tragedy of a young man's downfall and the
lure of a bygone era. The novel's descriptions of sex and drug use
prompted church authorities to place it on a list of forbidden
books. Cocaine retains its venom even today. Pitigrilli was the pen
name of Dino Segre, born in Turin in 1893. He worked as a foreign
correspondent in Paris during the 1920s, and became equally
celebrated and notorious for a series of audacious and subversive
books. He died in 1975.
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