Jazz Café

An austere lawyer commissions an enigmatic Maltese man to commit a heinous crime. A young man, prevented from returning home by the pope’s funeral, is forced, while waiting, to review his life and attempt to correct his mistakes. A man and a woman, meeting by chance on Elba, glimpse a glimmer of happiness. After a missed rendezvous in Chicago, a young scholar gets entangled in a tangle of encounters and memories that she cannot get to the bottom of. A magistrate on a mission in Paris returns tormentingly to a terrible crime he has had to judge and re-examines within himself the justice he has administered and in which he does not believe. A man of letters is unexpectedly invited to a reunion with fellow students he has not seen for years and finds himself among people he no longer recognises. From his hospital bed, a man with a curious surname recalls a lost love and discovers that all was not what it seemed…In this collection of short stories, Raffaele Simone brings to life a series of characters who have, despite the diversity of their destinies, something in common: the relentless search for that sliver of happiness and justice perhaps granted to humans.A series of stories that move forward breathlessly, driven by a vibrant interweaving of tones, animated by alienating and irresistibly comic characters and a dense network of literary evocations. In the background, large restless cities, powerful nocturnes, vast marinas, movements of crowds, unexpected musical impromptus, sudden bursts of verse. While the narrator’s gaze passes from the wide field to the most minute detail, from the open sky above Rome or Paris to the white rose a woman holds to her waist.