I Hadn't Understood

This “sharp-edged comedic novel of a semi-hapless Italian lawyer” who finds himself employed by the mob was a finalist for Italy’s prestigious Strega Prize (Kirkus Reviews).

Vincenzo Malinconico is a wildly unsuccessful lawyer who spends most of his time at the office trying to look busy. His wife has left him. His teenage children worry him to death. And he suffers from a chronic inability to control his sentence structure.

When he is asked to fill in as the public defender for alleged Mafioso Mimmo ’o Burzone, Malinconico seizes the opportunity to turn his life around. Without dwelling too long on what it might mean to be employed by the mob, he rushes to re-learn the Italian criminal code. Soon, Malinconico’s life becomes a comic battle to finish what he has started without falling further into the mafia’s clutches.

Diego De Silva’s rollicking, Naples Prize–winning comic novel orbits the irresistible mind of one of contemporary Italian fiction’s most beloved characters. Throughout his travails, Vincenzo contemplates every aspect of the life he sees before him in a wry voice that seduces, entertains, and moves the reader from the first page to the last.