The Fugitive

By Massimo Carlotto

From the author of Death’s Dark Abyss and The Goodbye Kiss comes an extraordinary tale of life on the run.
 
Massimo Carlotto’s odyssey began in 1976 when, as a member of a militant leftwing organization that had fallen awry of the ruling powers, he was arrested and falsely accused of murder. Unwilling to play the role of fall guy in a political power struggle, he chose to flee the country rather than wait for a verdict that the whole country knew was a foregone conclusion. He first went into hiding in the French underworld and then made his way to a Mexico embroiled in bloody class conflict. Betrayed by a Mexican lawyer, he returned to Italy in 1985 and spent six years in prison, during which time the “Carlotto case” became Italy’s most famous legal fiasco.
Carlotto was finally freed with a presidential pardon in 1993. Subsequently, his case helped bring about significant changes to the Italian criminal code to ensure that similar judicial travesties would never happen again.
The Fugitive is the first book that Carlotto wrote as a free man. It tells his story with verve and humor. Virtually a handbook on how to live life on the run, The Fugitive is also a vibrant novel full of vivid underworld characters and breathtaking moments that Carlotto recounts in the cool, lucid prose that has become his trademark.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Europa Editions
• Release date: Apr 16, 2013
• ISBN: 9781609451738

Massimo Carlotto

Massimo Carlotto was born in Padua, Italy. In addition to the many titles in his extremely popular “Alligator” series, he is also the author of The Fugitive, Death’s Dark Abyss, Poisonville, Bandit Love, and At the End of a Dull Day. He is one of Italy’s most popular authors and a major exponent of the Mediterranean Noir novel.

Reviews for The Fugitive

[danhammang · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This book is classified as fiction but it reads a lot more like a documentary of life on the run from the scary Italian judicial system, particularly since the factual account on which it is based is that of the author himself, Massimo Carlotto. Carlotto has been nominated and awarded a number of prizes for his mysteries. If this indeed can be called a novel it can be called a crime novel but not a mystery. It was pretty clear on that score from the first pages.Carlotto has laid out in these pages, with compelling detail, the insidious damage that life on the run can do to a person. I imagine much of it can be applied to the many people who were not involved in any way with crime but who simply had to flee some event that threatened their lives. There are many examples.The sad, lonely, debilitating details of his time in exile are set against a worldweary and heartwarming support of exile communities in Paris and Mexico City. In particular, his description of life in Mexico City was poignant, heartbreaking and punctuated by displays of the goodness of human beings with a true zinger at the end of this chapter of his life.It's an interesting read and a worthy entry into the venerable halls of Europa Publishing.

[shawnd_72 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This book was first written in 1994. It has only just been translated into English in 2006 and released in 2007. It was the first of three books written by this author -- the second two were released earlier in English and to more acclaim. As such, The Fugitive is a bit of an odd duck after the first two. However, if imagined to be first, it makes sense. The book is a true memoir by the author, not a fiction book as the second two were. The memoir is the author's first stab at writing an original work -- he was a translator in some of his jobs through his life -- basically an attempt to 'tell his story': an amazing story of legal and illegal acts as he tried to avoid prison and participate in the longest legal saga/trial in Italian history. I suspect this got him a footing as an author where, to his credit, he went on to write two substantial fiction works.The story on its face is amazing. Convicted for a crime he didn't commit, he goes through a series of trials and appeals. But before they can imprison him for a murder he didn't commit, he goes on the run. His time on the run makes up a good portion of the book. From places as diverse as the Mexican-Guatemalan border, Sardinia, Paris and more, Carlotto spends his time between wining and dining himself into a very obese man, having deep intellectual discussions with left-wing revolutionaries, and practicing a studious exercise of leaving no traces, avoiding any run-ins with police, and often up and disappearing leaving whole households behind. The fact that this was all funded by his apparently well-to-do parents makes the story a little less desperate, but definitely more humorous.Overall, I would recommend this book in most cases. To say this is a fast read is an understatement. It's more like this is a transcript of a 4 hour coffee conversation with the author. It reads like a diary or literally like a transcript of the guy telling his life story. In places it is laugh out loud funny; and in that way the humor reminded me a bit of Gogol's humor. However, the value is in the story, wit, humor, and sheer amazingness, as the writing itself is conversational.

[murdermysterymayhem · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

In 1976 at the age of 19 Massimo Carlotto, a member of Lotta Continua a far left leaning political group, found the body of a murdered acquaintance which he dutifully reported to the authorities who immediately accused him of committing the crime. Carlotto was arrested, tried, and imprisoned beginning a very complicated legal battle where he was acquitted, retried, and reconvicted. In the course of all these legal troubles Carlotto decided to flee the country to live in exile as a fugitive from the law. The fight with Italy's legal system was to eventually cover 11 trials and lasted 18 years until his Presidential pardon in 1993.The Fugitive, Carlotto's first novel (really a memoir), is about his flight abroad to avoid further imprisonment. In short chapters that jump around in chronology, Carlotto relates stories about his life on the run. These stories are told in short bursts like the fleeting memories of a bad dream with just the strongest impressions passed on to the reader. The disorientation of being an "accidental fugitive" is palpable as Carlotto is usually in the company of other exiles in Paris and South America and in constant dread of being discovered. Carlotto’s obsession with food, his health problems, fragile relationships, and the characters he builds to hide his identity all figure prominently. The book reads like a work of fiction and it is this life in the underworld that has given Carlotto a solid understanding of the people who inhabit it and probably provided much of the background material for his crime novels. The Fugitive is a very good place to start to understand this Italian writer.