New titles

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Sandro Modeo 


MOURINHO AND PHILOSOPHY | L’Alieno Mourinho
José Mourinho from Barcelona to Madrid
Introduction by Arrigo Sacchi
Afterword by Irvine Welsh
190 pages | essay
Publication date: September 2010
manuscript available


Arrived in Italy like an alien – a “thing from another world”, to quote the title from a popular film by Howard Hawks – Mourinho was passively idolized or ferociously loathed, but almost never understood. This book focuses on his unique persona by zooms on little known or little studied aspects. Firstly, his affinities with two Hungarians who lived in the last century differently-experienced on “the art of escape”: the “wizard” Harry Houdini (virtuoso of handcuffs and HH before Helenio Herrera) and the “wanderer” Béla Guttmann, the coach who won the Champions’ League with Benfica and Portugal’s idol when José was a child. Secondly, the innovative  training methods, which mix the most sophisticated “weapons of persuasion” of social psychology, with the neurosciences attainments with regard to nervous system protection and decision-making training. And finally – veiled by brilliant and histrionic media diversion  - the uncommon ability of digging into the people surrounding him, and into himself: for instance – in the case of Inter – into the fear and nostalgia which paralyzed a whole sector and Inter supporters, and into the compulsive need of change and of victory. At the end of this journey it will be clear why Mourinho’s uniqueness is one with his solitude, a needed and inevitable solitude. 



Sandro Modeo, essayist, is specialized in science and  soccer. He has been writing for Corriere della Sera for twenty years and in the Guardian’s sports pages for some time. He collaborated with La rivista dei Libri (the Italian version of New York Review of  Books), Le Scienze and the Darwin Magazine.



Irvine Welsh, novelist, has also written plays, screenplays, and directed several short films. His first novel, Trainspotting (1993), a blackly comic portrait of a group of young heroin users living in Edinburgh in the 1980s, was adapted as a film directed by Danny Boyle, starring Ewan McGregor and Robert Carlyle, in 1996. The Acid House, a collection of short stories, was published in 1994 and was followed by Welsh’s second novel, Marabou Stork Nightmares (1995), Ecstasy: Three Tales of Chemical Romance, a collection of three novellas, was published in 1996, and a third novel, Filth, was published in 1998. Glue (2001), is the story of four boys growing up in an Edinburgh housing estate. Porno, a sequel to Trainspotting, was published in 2002. Recent works are The Bedroom Secrets of the Master Chefs (2006);  a play, Babylon Heights (2006), written with Dean Cavanagh; and If You Liked School You’ll Love Work (2007). His novel, Crime, was published in 2008 and his latest collection of stories is Reheated Cabbage (2009). Welsh is also the author of plays; his journalism includes a column for Loaded magazine and occasional articles for The Guardian. 



Arrigo Sacchi, former Italian football coach and originator of  the “total soccer” concept, was elected as the best Italian coach  ever by The Times. He was head coach of the Italy national football  team (1991 – 1996) which ended runner-up in the world championship in  1994. He is best known for his successes as A.C. Milan manager,  leading the team to win the Italian championship in 1998 and UEFA  Champions League in 1989 and 1990.

Read an English proposal + sample translations

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Marco Giusti

007 ALL’ITALIANA | Italian 007
200 pages – illustrated essay
Publication date: October 2010


An incredible photo book, featuring numerous archive images and original posters.

“I interviewed a number of directors, producers, screenwriters and actors from the 077 and 3S3 series for my TV show Stracult two years ago. I realized that the phenomenon was not at all marginal, unlike I had believed it to be and experienced it back then. [...] So I decided to tell about these people’s stories, their films, their characters, their dreams: all the care and passion that went into this long-neglected and underrated genre. Italo-007 was not as crazy and complex as spaghetti western, which affected several generations back in the 20th century. It did, however, have a revolutionary impact, and definitely a style of its own”. Among the various genres of Italian popular film, “Italian-007” is possibly the least appreciated and investigated by movie enthusiasts. It includes hundreds of films inspired by the famous James Bond saga, which were released in Italy from 1964 to 1967 and then quickly succumbed to spaghetti westerns and grand American productions. Directors the likes of Sergio Sollima, Alberto De Martino, Umberto Lenzi, Sergio Greco created an endless list of secret agents, variously named 077, 008, 009, Z7 and so on: spies in all flavors, engaged in missions anywhere from New York to Paris, from Istanbul to Beirut, from Ibiza to Marbella. All of them were surrounded by beautiful, dangerous and skimpily dressed girls, whom they set out to seduce while trying to save their own lives. And, of course, they all had a few enemies to destroy, with their load of hidden nuclear weapons, superpowerful lasers, secret microfilms and kidnapped scientists. Using wonderful images and original posters, Marco Giusti outlines the history of this fantastic pop imagery: “movies made in a matter of months, written in a few weeks”, with “minimal costs, small crews, sure bargains”. An important piece of Italian film history, full of madness, creativity and original ideas: a genre worth reviving and appreciating.
Marco Giusti is a TV writer, director and journalist. A film and advertising expert, he was the creator of a number of Italian TV shows, including Blob and Stracult. He currently writes for Il manifesto and L’Espresso.

See an English, photographic proposal

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Michela Murgia

THE WORLD HAS TO KNOW  | Il mondo deve sapere
Reprint (first edition: 2006)
144 pages 
novel
Publication date: June 2010
updated version, with a new chapter by the author

“An important book” DIARIO
“Thoroughly engaging, delightful and very funny” – IL MESSAGGERO

Rights sold to:
Germany

A novel, a comedy, an investigation. It entertains, it makes you tremble and it pisses you off. The World Has to Know is the diary of a month in a call center. 
For thirty uninterminable days, the author sold vacuum cleaners on the phone to thousands of housewives for Kirby, an American multinational. In the meantime, she observed the company’s techniques of persuasion and punishment, describing a working model halfway between Berlusconism and Scientology. The World Has to Know describes temporary work in a way which is corrosive, pungent, full of grace and of imaginativeness – miraculously making you laugh. Until you cry.
Michela Murgia (1972) was born in Cabras, Oristano. After her theological studies, she became a webmaster, manager, and an operator in a call center. The World Has to Know has recently become a movie (“Tutta la vita davanti” by the Italian film director Paolo Virzì) and a theatrical pièce by Teresa Saponangelo. Michela Murgia has written also Viaggio in Sardegna, Einaudi, 2008 and Accabadora, Einaudi 2009 (Dessì Prize, Mondello Prize, Shortlisted at Supercampiello Prize).
This is her first novel.

Read the new chapter
English sample available
Read the press review

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Omar di Monopoli

FONZI’S LAW | La legge di Fonzi
300 pages | novel
Publication date: June 2010

Like a bad memory dating back to a violent era, Nado “Manicomio”Pentecoste is about to return to Monte Svevo: few houses built in the shade of the factories situated in Taranto and Brindisi, where once some of the cruellest Corona Unita clans could run about undisturbed. Pisso and Giordano, young car thieves capable of everything, are waiting for him, together with the town notables gang, lead by mayor Gerardo Santilli; Skùppetta, a dodgy junkyard without scruples of taking advance of his cousin Manicomio’s capture. And, above all, Giovanni, nicknamed Fonzi, is waiting for him, Pentecoste’s little brother, some sort of hermit who can awaken forgotten tensions: was it really Manicomio the one who committed a dreadful crime five years ago? And what do the new church’s undergrounds hide, a church built against the protestations because the area is subject to environmental constraints? While the town is immersed in the splendor of the annual Giostra Medievale, Manicomio’s wrath unleashes in a violent and vengeful way: blood will flow in the rendering of accounts. On the background of an archaic and sultry deep South, Omar Di Monopoli’s western set in Puglia is back with a choral tightened story where nothing is what is seems and no one is innocent.

Omar Di Monopoli (1971) lives and works in Puglia. He published for Isbn Edizioni the novels Men and Dogs (2007, Premio Kilhgren) and Iron and Fire (2008).

Read the press review
For movie production companies
Read an English sample

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Matteo Sartori

FAMILY RULES | Regole di famiglia
224 pages | May 2010
novel

Offended and confused, Pietro Keller, aged eleven, had stepped onto the stairs, with freezing hands and a panting chest. The ceilings of the old house in the woods had become dark behind his veiled eyes, and the mansion La Betulla had seemed to sink a few centimeters deeper into the wet earth under the weight of injustice, its windows and doors shaken by the painful vibration that departed from his tiny heart
Meet the Kellers: well-to-do and restless, progressive and immobile. Family Rules is an engrossing family saga, told by Matteo Sartori from an innovative and modern point of view. Two moments (1973 and 1978) in Italian history are watched through the eyes of young Pietro, nicknamed The Archivist, the last son of a sophisticated and unforgettable family, which typifies yesterday’s and today’s Italy. On the background, youthful loves and confusions, vitalism and impasse, betrayals and beatings, nostalgia and Formula 1 tragedies.
Family Rules is a fine and moving novel, fraught with lost memories: the portrait of a world that has become corrupted with too much love, in spite of all good intentions.

Matteo Sartori was born in Milan in 1972. He works for a movie production company. In 1997, he published the novel Il magro Rio e la minoranza silenziosa (Frassinelli).

English sample available
For movie production companies
Read the press review

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