The God of the People

In the summer of 1985 Giuliano, with his recently obtained high school diploma, spends muggy and interminable days in the town of Carrone waiting to understand what to do with his life. One day, passing by the abandoned furnace that had belonged to his grandfather, he sees a fire coming from the pine forest, hears screams and goes to check it out. In front of him a burning body falls that gradually burns out and at the end is discovered intact: he is Italo Orlando, a man who seems to come from an old legend and who will become part of Giuliano's life, strengthening him and determining his decision not to continue his studies but to re-establish the family brick factory.

The God of the People is the story of Giuliano and the ambivalent relationship he has with Italo, a good-luck charm and servant, friend and idol; but it is also the story of Giuliano's family and friends who together go through more than thirty years of life in Southern Italy: from the development of the factory during the wild building boom to the collapse, following an earthquake, of the gym that had just been renovated by Giuliano's company, which caused the death of eight children, including his son Eugenio.

Carola Susani's voice finally returns to tell us about people and myths so concrete that they go beyond the sheet to sit next to us, and she does so from the point of view of Piera, Giuliano's surviving daughter, who describes the before and after, the joys and the wounds, guiding us through the stories that have been told to her, giving life to a painful and deformed coming-of-age novel.