Italian poet Daniele Mencarelli’s debut novel – first published in Italy in 2018 and now here – was inspired by his own experiences. It’s 1999, and the protagonist, Daniele, is a 25-year-old poet who lives with his parents. He is dealing with “an invisible disease affecting his brain, or heart, or all the blood flowing through his body”. The doctors are defeated by Dan’s mental pain, referring to his condition variously as: “Manic depressive. Borderline. Personality disorder. Generalised anxiety disorder.” Until the age of 20, Dan numbed himself with drugs, but when his friends realised that “my pleasure concealed a homicidal intent, complete loneliness set in”.
In his second novel in Italian, Everything Calls for Salvation (published in Wendy Wheatley’s English translation in 2022 and adapted into a Netflix series), Mencarelli went further back to the week in 1994 he spent in a psychiatric ward. In The House of Gazes, also a work of autofiction (deftly translated by Octavian MacEwen), Dan has quit cocaine, but relies on alcohol for “sweeping away the sharp edges that wound me”. Beset by violent outbursts and tremors, he repeatedly crashes his car when drunk or gets into fights.
