Valerio Evangelisti, San Francisco lead author and great activist, has passed away

The adventures of his hero Nikola Emmerich revealed that the most important Italian authors of contemporary fiction were also a tireless fighter against all forms of fascism. Sick for years, he passed away on Monday, April 18th.

Who is the writer or activist should we cry today? The most important Italian author of contemporary fiction, Valerio Evangelisti, died in Bologna at the age of 69. He had been ill for several years, but his health problems did not prevent him from continuing to fight for what he believed in: fighting all fascism. In recent years, he has devoted much of his energy to supporting the anti-liberal left political movement Potere al popolo.

Born in 1952, Evangelisti studied history and political science and published several articles on the history of the Revolutionary Socialist Party and class struggle in Emilia-Romagna before embarking on the novel. He reveals himself there in the semi-historical and semi-scientific fictional adventures of Inspector Nicholas Emmerich. In each of his adventures, Evangelisti immerses himself in this mix of Torquemada and Harry Dickson in both the past and the future, playing with the multiverse and making his evil hero a link between the past and the future until he faces his own ghost. Adventure, Emerich ghost.

The voice of the world of work

In the historically correct Middle Ages, an underground world of spirits and ghosts mingled, making it the heir to an entire baroque current of Italian popular culture, from the highly cultured Umberto Eco to the filmmakers Mario Bava and Riccardo Frieda. “Eymerich, Twenty years ago at Les Utopiales he told us, It’s my dark side, my dark side. I play with him like fire. Damaging books triggers the desire to harm life. »

The character’s success has somewhat overshadowed the rest of his work, which is a shame. to the rebellious theoretical musings that clearly expressed his ambition (“Contemporary American science fiction is a shadow of what it used to be: normative, poor, and often reduced to illegitimate forms of popular science, devoid of literary and intellectual. The abandonment of obscurity and provocation was surely fatal to him.” He wrote in a controversial “manifesto” on the website of his latest French publisher, La Volte) joined in writing historical novels depicting the working-class world for which he was fighting: anthracite And We are nothing to be everything!a recent title that is almost as much a statement of a diverse work as it is committed to.

to read
turn Nicholas Emrich It was published by La Volte and included in part as a pocket book. Historical novels are available at Black Shores.