Like a king

It is a Sunday morning in late June and Sergio and Giovanna, as usual, have invited two couples of dear friends for lunch in their apartment in Testaccio. They are making final preparations while waiting for the guests when a stranger shows up at their door. Many years ago he lived in that house and would like to see it again one last time, he justifies himself. His gaze seems lost, as if he were looking for someone. Or something. Her name is Elsa Corti, she comes from afar and in the bag she has with her she keeps a bundle of old letters that no one has ever read. And which, between anecdotes of an adventurous life and confidences full of nostalgia, keep a terrible secret. Thus an unmentionable past resurfaces, capable of cracking even the apparently peaceful and almost monotonous existence of Sergio and Giovanna and their friends, marking them forever. Ferzan Ozpetek, in his third book, gives life to a thriller of feelings, which intertwines ancient and new truths, transporting the reader from today to the end of the Sixties, from Rome to Istanbul, in a succession of twists, back and forth. in time. Who is really Elsa Corti? Why did he leave Italy so many years earlier, almost running away, forever distancing himself from his sister Adele, to whom he was so attached? Page after page, passions that seemed dormant once evoked begin to flare up again, forcing everyone to deal with their feelings, doubts, lies. The present mixes with the past to narrate the power of life itself, which forces us to make choices from which we never go back. But also to celebrate - as only Ozpetek can do - a magical, sensual and tolerant Istanbul, with its ancient hamams, the Ottoman palaces that are reflected in the Bosphorus, the old neighborhoods that have now disappeared.