Niccolo Ammaniti's novel is a biting satire of the circus that is Italian politics and the society of the glitterati in 2013.
The plot is purposefully outrageous and focuses on two groups whose fates become intertwined.
The four remaining Wilde Beasts of Abaddon, three men and a woman, are Hell-bent Satanists, desperate to carry out a spectacular gory outrage in order to outdo their more gruesome rivals the Children of the Apocalypse. The leader of the Wilde Beasts, Saverio Moneta, a furniture salesman, humiliated by his monster of a wife, hits upon a plan to garner prestige within Satanist circles and guarantee a place for himself and his fellow Beasts in Hell.
A fashionable novelist, Fabrizio Ciba, a member of the glitterati, whose literary talents are on the wane, though his sexual drive remains insatiable, is looking for new creative fuel to power his public reputation: he finds it in the most unlikely circumstances.
The two plot lines are brought together when the Wilde Beasts and Ciba are drawn into a party to end all parties given by a self-made multi-millionaire in the Villa Ada house and park in the centre of Rome, where a third strand to the story tops that which has come before.
Ammaniti sets himself a narrative pace that never flags. Indeed, once the party at the Villa Ada begins, that furious pace only accelerates until it appears everyone gets the end they deserve.
Seeming absurdities, outrageous situations and human follies are piled one on top of the other with a ghoulish humour that never fails. But of course this is not absurd. The activities of Italian politicians and celebs in reality can match any fiction, as Ammaniti is only too well aware.
But Ammaniti's target is not only Italy: this is a novel pointing a deliciously blood-soaked finger, ever sexually resuscitant, yet shaking from alcohol overload, at the rest of 21st-century decadence around the globe.
From time to time the absurd ceases to amuse as we find ourselves, like the author, despairing of humankind and seeing no end to the hubris of the trend-setters: the novel does not resolve into the total triumph of sanity, but with a hint that the circus, given a brief pause to catch breath, is ready to fly off into orbit once more.
- Peter Stupples teaches at the Dunedin School of Art.
