El mal oscuro

First published in 1964, at the height of the neo-realist boom, The Dark Evil was immediately perceived by the public and critics as a book against the current. Winner of the prestigious Campiello and Viareggio awards, it is the personal story of a depression and, in a broader sense, the mirror of a contemporaneity eaten away by neurosis. Berto wrote it in two months, and from that feverish work a monumental text emerged that deepens its literary roots in authors such as Svevo and Gadda, even marking a turning point with respect to the literary tradition from which it drinks: Dark evil not only describes a mental pathology, but interprets it, embodies it, converts it in a plastic way into words. Their language is the very manifestation of the disease, "the tragicomic epiphany of darkness"; his style, a kaleidoscopic flow of consciousness that concocts a confession as well articulated as Saint Augustine's or Montaigne's, to name other illustrious examples of introspective literature. With extraordinary skill, Berto spins in these pages a daring and avant-garde prose that he uses to disembowel an evil as old as humanity itself: the fear of living. In this fear, in his fear, the author immerses himself to bring to the surface the spirit of a historical epoch (the postwar period with its outdated economic boom), the sick soul of a city (the Rome of La dolce vita) and the petty contradictions of a social condition (the provincial bourgeoisie).