Tiempo de matar

The rape and murder of a native girl at the hands of a young lieutenant of the Italian army at the time of the fascist invasion of Abyssinia forms the backbone of one of the most shocking beginnings of war literature, which begins a novel -the only one written by the screenwriter of La dolce vita- capable like few others of denouncing the hypocrisy behind every attempt at conquest, machismo disguised as warrior ardor, the shame of colonialism, the impunity of the invader, the misery, the gratuitousness of the pain inflicted by man when he starts a war. The cynical narrator and protagonist of the story is harassed, in his conscience, by remorse that does not restore the lives taken or repair the dignity of a woman who was raped and abandoned to her fate; and he is attacked, in his body, by a leprosy that consumes his flesh but does not atone for his sins.