Where the light

Twice winner of the Selezione Campiello award, Pellegrino’s new novel revisits an enigmatic genius, the economist Federico Caffè whose sudden disappearance is still an unsolved mystery.

Rome, April 1987. Professor Federico Caffè, a leading figure in economics, an advocate of socialism and the weaker classes disappeared off the face of the earth. What if, as many suspects, he made a conscious decision to live as a homeless, far from the capitalist tendencies he foresaw? Perhaps he found peace in a small, abandoned village in Southern Italy. Following this hypothesis, the author reconstructs the Professor’s last days, his demise, and the plight of entire country as it soars
through a decade of economic boom, defined by corruption and division.

But the question remains: what really happened to Federico Caffè?