Il corrotto. Una storia di tangenti negli anni di Mani Pulite

The protagonist of this novel is Professor Leonardo Bastiani, a fifty-year-old law teacher in a school in Treviso. The story takes place from February to November 1993, the most dramatic year of the investigation known as ‘Mani pulite’. Leonardo is a man of great ideals who devoutly prepares to spread the principles of legality and responsibility among the students every morning. He was also involved in politics, elected in a progressive coalition, and held the position of councilor in a municipality in the Treviso area. He carries out his task with a moral candor that leaves no room for a pragmatic vision of the res publica, and which soon collides with small-scale power games against which he is unable to measure himself. In this context, the conflict with the head of the administration, the mayor Ettore Cazzagon, is becoming increasingly bitter, fueled by a different conception of the role and purpose of the institution. One morning Leonardo’s life is overwhelmed by a warranty notice. The accusation is defamatory: corruption. He feels wounded in his dignity, humiliated in the ideal principles that had inspired his life, abandoned by all, a victim of the judges and the deceptions of politicians. Above all, he can’t bear to have the mirrored public image of which he has always prided himself on being disfigured. Convinced that he has suffered abuse, he reflects obsessively on the judicial affair that involved him, to the point of distorting his vision of politics and justice with unforeseen consequences.