The perverse story of journalist Tito Maria Imperiale and the aberrations, depravities and private vices in a small Italian town that is at once grotesque, exhilarating and despicable.

By Lake Garda, Tito Maria Imperiale, the editor of a local newspaper, organises raunchy events with his wife Ofelia, which are attended by aspiring writers and intellectuals. Despite their happy marriage, based on the sharing of their most varied sexual deviations, his wife leaves him and Tito has a meltdown. In an attempt to overcome his loneliness, he starts to draft a desperate, comical portrait of characters as grotesque as him: an old university lecturer haunted by ghosts; an aspiring film director determined to make a sequel to Pasolini’s Salò; a philospher looking for bishops’ rings to kiss.

A humorous, ruthless novel, an uncompromising satire filled with absurd, grotesque and all-too-human characters.

It’s the story of Doctor Lunfardo, who dreamt of becoming a singer but won the Strega literature prize instead.

Doctor Lunfardo, AKA Don Fifì, dreamt of becoming a Bing Crosby-style crooner but, instead, wrote a hugely successful book and won the Strega prize.

Unfortunately, he got sucked into the terrible world of publishing and his life was ruined. He’s now trying in vain to find a little peace on the shore of Lake Garda, and is besieged by pain-in-the-neck people, relatives, nightmares and hypochondria. Set in provincial Italy during the global pandemic, the story sees countless improbable topics revolve around our “hero”: brazen Neo-Fascist prostitutes riding in Zündapp Wehrmacht sidecars, elderly dentists heading for dementia and still loyal to their pedal-operated drills, demoniacal swamp sirens, railway tramps who were once the kings of luxury bathroom fittings, pilgrims obsessed with Lourdes and sanctuaries around Lake Garda, stalker interns, improbable suicides, conceited aspiring female writers, high-maintenance ménages à trois led by jealous celluloid dolls… A true circus. Permunian gives us a humorous, ruthless novel, an uncompromising satire filled with absurd, grotesque, all-too-human humans.