Alfa Romeo 1300 and Other Miracles

A raucous debut novel of organized—and unorganized—crime. "A story that takes itself unseriously enough to be funny" ( The Daily Beast, "This Week's Hot Reads"). Diego is a forty-something car salesman with a talent for telling half-truths. Fausto sells watches over the phone. Claudio manages (barely) his family-owned neighborhood supermarket. The characteristic common to each of these three men is their abject mediocrity. Yet, mediocrity being the mother of outrageous invention, they embark on a project that would be too ambitious in scope for any single one of them, let alone all three together. They decide to flee the city and to open a rustic holiday farmhouse in the Italian countryside outside Naples. Their misconceived endeavor would have been challenging enough for these three unlikely entrepreneurs, but when a local mobster arrives and demands they pay him protection money, things go from bad to worse. Now their ordinary (if wrongheaded) attempt to run a small business in an area that organized crime syndicates consider their own becomes a quixotic act of defiance. A "miraculous" Italian comedy that will have readers laughing out loud, Alfa Romeo 1300 and Other Miracles marks Fabio Bartolomei's vivid debut. "An entertaining and humorous debut." — La Repubblica "A melancholy yet hopeful fable told with a smile." — Internazionale "Left the kind of smile on my face that doesn't go unnoticed and which people often mistake for a kind of facial paralysis." —Valentina Aversano, Setteperuno