Who is Lou Sciortino? - Ottavio Cappellani

Metropolitan Catania, and Tony's barbecues are a neighbourhood sensation. Each weekend the party girls rub shoulders with elegant Mafiosi - and no wonder, since Tony's uncle Sal runs the local show.

When a policeman is shot in uncle Mimmo's shop, it isn't your ordinary murder. Lou Sciortino - gin and tonic in hand, newly arrived from his safe job laundering mob money in New York - finds more in the Old Country than he'd bargained for. This is sunny Sicily, where no one is truly anyone's friend, killers have sidelines in amaretti, the nicest people can still bring on the apocalypse, and grandfathers are to be feared above all men...

Meet the family that makes the Sopranos look like the Waltons.

'Cappellani's Catania has the brutality of Quentin Tarantino and the trash of Pedro Almodovar' Corriere della Sera

'Brilliant dialogue . . . All the plot and rhythm of great cinema' Vanity Fair

'Finally the post-modern and metropolitan Sicily has found its ideal chronicler . . . A completely exhilarating story' La Repubblica

Ottavio Cappellani is a journalist with a daily column on the Sicilia newspaper. He also writes for several other Italian papers. His first book - La Morale del Cavallo - was a treatise on Habermas, and his first novel was Chi E Lou Sciortino? - Who is Lou Sciortino?. He currently lives in Catania in Sicily where he writes, fronts a post-punk band, and owns a farm on which he cultivates Carob trees and olives.