Italian novelist Valerio Evangelisti died on April 18 in Bologna, his hometown, after a long struggle with illness. He was 69 years old.
An academic and government employee in the Treasury, and a staunch communist, he distinguished himself by essays, the French literary genre and historical thriller, by the course that made him famous, that of the ruthless investigator Nicolas Emrich, “complete schizophrenia,” in his words. Not to forget the many accounts of the Mexican Revolution (Evangelisti lived part of the year since 2003 in Oaxaca, where he had a home), including fire stream, And the series metal screeching It began in 1998. Among his influences are the novels of Philip K. Dick, Damon Knight (Author to serve the man), Dos Passos, Steinbeck, James Ellroy, and popular French literature.
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His first successes date back to the early 1990s with the publication of the first volume of the Nicholas Emmerich epic, which has been translated into fifteen countries, and includes no less than twelve volumes, the last of which appeared in 2018 (Emerich Ghost). The enthusiasm for this prolific author confirmed, with the publication, in the 1990s, of the first part of a trilogy dedicated to Nostradamus, precursor It sold over 100,000 copies in Italy. The three volumes were compiled in 2000, under the title Magus. Il Romanzo de Nostradamus. We also owe him the “American Trilogy”, followed by the “Pirate Course” that earned him the qualification of “Series Writer”, which asserted that the principle of the series or episode “At least demonstrates the role of memory in identity formation.” In 2001, in the daily newspaper La RepublicaHe said: “A good novelist is like a rat that sniffs every nook and cranny. It is in cellars that novels are born and not out of virtual contact with the gods.
On the fringes of this extensive romantic work, Valerio Evangelisti was also interested, through essays, with the Bono gang, villains, Sandinistas in Nicaragua, and “Jacobin commoners” during the revolution. For its translator Serge Quadrapani, “Valerio’s ability to play with SF canons, thrillers, soap operas, westerns, and fantasy, was fantastic.” Most of his novels have been translated by Rivages as well as Métailié and La Volte.
