Diego Marani: 5 books

'The Interpreter isn't merely the sequel to New Finnish Grammar and The Last of the Vostyachs: it is a singular and deeply felt thesis, a warped manifesto of sorts, derived from a career spent immersed in languages. For Marani is up to his old tricks. Like in its predecessors, the novel comes dripping...

Inspector Cabillot, the first Europanto detective tackles varied European concerns such as a mad cow disease terrorist cell that takes over London and the kidnapping of a major European Union leader by Finnish nationalists who want to replace Europanto with Finnish as the only language of the European...

'To find Marani harnessing the genre of detective story for creative effect is not surprising; after all, he plays with the form in his Europanto synthetic-language sequence Las Adventures des inspector Cabillot and The Last of the Vostyachs revolves similarly around a murderously suppressed linguistic...

The Last of the Vostyachs won two literary prizes in Italy: The Premio Campiello and The Premio Stresa. As a child, Ivan and his father work as forced labourers in a mine in Siberia, the father having committed some minor offence against the regime. Ivan�s father is then murdered in front of his...

One night at Trieste in September 1943 a seriously wounded soldier is found on the quay. The doctor, of a newly arrived German hospital ship gives the unconscious soldier medical assistance. His new patient has no documents or anything that can identify him. When he regains consciousness he has lost...