Petrolio

A definitive new edition of the posthumous book that became a cult.

The non-fiction novel about power and evil in 1970’s Italy.

Edited by Walter Siti, Premio Strega winner and the unquestionable expert on Pasolini’s work.

Begun during the worldwide oil crisis and, over the years, described as a novel about power, Petrolio is a non-fiction novel about the death of Enrico Mattei, and the true reason behind the author’s murder.

It’s a huge fragment of what should have been a monumental, 2,000-page work with, as its protagonist, Carlo Valletti, a middle-class ENI engineer from Turin who contains two different individuals in the same body, two sides of the same coin: Carlo di Polis, his public, rational persona, and Carlo di Tetis, the hidden, sexual one.

What emerges from these “Notes” is a desperate human cross section of Italy during the economic boom, amid the exploration of sexual mysteries and dark conspiracies, as well as still unpunished State crimes.

In this book, Pier Paolo Pasolini takes his experimentalism to the extreme: ellipses in lieu of an introduction, seven prefaces, a fragmented structure and a huge variety of stylistic registers that go from the lyrical to the journalistic, from an interview in verse to narration.

Thanks to Walter Siti’s original critical interpretations and Maria Careri’s editing of the text, Petrolio now returns in a new, definitive version that sheds light on Pier Paolo Pasolini’s most mysterious, famous and personal book.