There is a dark side of Italian history that not even Italians know too well, but luckily there is a man -Carlo Lucarelli- a noir writer, a journalist and a popular TV host who tries to rescue it from oblivion.

“We call the ugly things of our past mysteries, but mysteries are things you cant know, the right word would be secrets,” he said during the literary event “Libri Come” at the Italian Cultural Institute in New York; “what happened in the past is known, its in the draws and in the minds of someone; its written in pages of documents and history books never read by anyone.” Like Pier Paolo Pasolini said in his famous and visionary 1974 Corriere della Sera article, Lucarelli tries to “coordinate facts even far from each other (…), he puts together the disorganized and fragmentary pieces of an entire consistent political scene, re-establishes the logic where arbitrariness, lunacy and mystery seem to rule.” Lucarelli puts the facts in order without never forgetting the power of emotions. He is a storyteller who starts every book, every episode of his TV show, with the phrase a child could say coming back from school “you could never imagine what the teacher did today.” A simple yet profoundly evocative formula. We sat down with him at the Italian Cultural Institute...

A few shots from the interview (Photos by Marcello Pertosa) Lucarelli at the conference "Libri Come" with the Director of the Italian Cultiral Institute, Riccardo Viale

Can you introduce yourself to the American public?

I am an Italian writer who tries to make sense of the contradictions of Italy, today's and yesterday's. I attempt to do this through my novels, on TV, and with movies.

But you have done even more …

When you write you become a magnet for interesting situations, challenges, and stimulating stuff; I happened to write comic book story-lines and to become a character in a comic book, I lent my facial traits to the protagonist of a cartoon called Cornelio. I have also worked in radio, where I recombined stories of music and crime.

At the event “Libri Come” you defined yourself as a “troublemaker writer.” How difficult it is to be one in a country like Italy?

In Italy many writers act as “troublemakers,” it's rare to find somebody who writes to confirm something that already exists, they are all against something. Hence it's difficult up to a certain point. It becomes harder, yet more effective, when you start discovering new things, which in Italy is quite difficult. In our country, we virtually know everything: investigation, judiciary, police, historians, journalists have discovered and chronicled many things. It is a common place to say we don't know anything, but we know a lot! But if you discover something new, well, that is dangerous. Furthermore, it is easy to make a list of facts, it is much harder to do it while galvanizing emotions. You become a “troublemaker” when you recollect things but you do it in a way that people will never forget them.

There is also another way to become a rompiscatole, when you have such an attachment to your subject, to you territory,that you turn into the symbol of your “troublemaking.” Roberto Saviano is a good example. He is a writer from the south, a Neapolitan who in Casal di Principe, among the camorristi, has written a paramount book, which has sparked an incredible buzz. He was able to become one of those writers that people listen to.

I hope I am a storyteller able to move people and engrave things into them so that they never forget them.

The Genoa G8 at Blu Notte Misteri Italiani

Massacres of Bologna, Ustica and Capaci

Roberto Saviano at Blu Notte

What impact did Saviano have on young writers? Are there others like him?

He has had a really positive impact. There are people who scream “he is a hero,” some others are bothered by this but I think it is non-sense. We are at war, and war needs heroes. He is the hero. There are other young and courageous writers who are not under the same type of threat because they do not have the same presence. and also because some people must have realized that it is better not to create another Saviano. That said, there is plenty of young writers, young reporters, young troublemakers. They only lack visibility because they aren't published.

Il Fatto Quotidiano has published a list of 12 journalists …

That's another aspect that is too often forgotten, the journalists who are under threat.

Saviano is under escort, how are the others doing?

I know some of them. They have been threatened with dead cats, bullets, burned cars, they have been assaulted; they are practically at the stage before disappearance. We are talking about stuff that if it happened to me I would immediately be assigned an escort. What is mind boggling is that very likely they haven't denounced the Casalesi, like Saviano, but probably wrote about a member of the local government who did something shady, because in Italy you are more likely to be in danger if you discover something small rather than something big.
Michele Santoro, journalist and host of the political talk show Annozero, showed some Calabrian journalists who are menaced by the local mafia, 'ndrangheta. Il Fatto Quotidiano has written about them. However, these are things that we should be writing about every day, they are absurd!

Calabrian journalists threatened by 'ndrangheta