Las tres de la mañana

"I just turned fifty-one, my father's age then. I thought it might be a good time to write about those two days and nights." The two days and nights to which Antonio, the narrator of this story, refers are those that, just turned eighteen, he spent with his father in Marseille. His childhood had been marked by epilepsy and his family decided to take him to see a doctor in that city who proposed a possible cure with a new medication. Three years after starting the treatment, Antonio has to return to the city to check if he has indeed overcome the disease. This time only his father -already separated from the mother- accompanies him and, to assess the cure, the boy must undergo a stress test and, with the help of some pills, stay two days without sleep. During those long sleepless hours father and son spend, wandering around the city, going to a jazz club, crossing undesirable neighborhoods, taking a boat to go to a local beach, they meet two women who invite them to a bohemian party, the boy lives his sexual initiation, the father confesses intimacies and secrets of which he had never told him... And throughout those two days and nights they both share unforgettable moments, which will forever mark the life of the narrator. An initiation novel of a dazzling beauty, whose title is taken from a phrase of Suave is Francis Scott Fitzgerald's night: "In the true dark night of the soul it is always three in the morning". Gianrico Carofiglio explores parent-child relationships with an emotion-filled gaze, and captures decisive moments in the formation of the young protagonist, who travels an unknown city with his father and discovers things that he will never forget.