Canongate has issued a new paperback edition of Niccolò Ammaniti's I'm Not Scared (originally published in an English translation by Jonathan Hunt in 2003), alongside his later novel The Crossroads. The two books can be read as companion pieces on the complex relationship between father and son, a theme that clearly fascinates Ammaniti – before making his name as a thriller writer, he collaborated with his father (a professor in psycopathology) on an essay on the problems of adolescence entitled 'In the name of the son'.
I'm Not Scared is set in the blisteringly hot summer of 1978. While the adults who live in the few houses that make up Aqua Traverse stay indoors, the children roam the countryside on their bikes. And on one of their excursions, in an abandoned farmhouse, Michele discovers a terrible secret. Ammaniti manages to walk a tightrope between writing from the point of view of the nine-year-old Michele and providing enough information (largely through the voice of the narrator, an older Michele) so that we, the reader, are soon able to connect Michele's fateful discovery with the arrival of a mysterious stranger and the tension pervading the village. Not only is this a gripping, unputdownable thriller, Ammaniti's realistic portrayal of his young hero – and Michele's relationship with his friends and family – makes it a compelling coming-of-age drama.
In The Crossroads, the lead character, Cristiano, is slightly older – thirteen. At the centre of the narrative is the complex, loving, but occasionally violent relationship between Cristiano and his father Rino, an alcoholic right-wing extremist who is fighting social services to keep his son. Rino and his two friends – a man who blames himself for the death of his daughter, and a dreamer who was strange even before he electrocuted himself – come up with a plan to solve all their problems: they'll ramraid an ATM machine. But instead of a standard robbery-gone-wrong plot, Ammaniti gives us a series of coincidences and twists that, although totally unbelievable, keep the novel hurtling along. Unlike the earlier I'm Not Scared, with its sense of unease and suspense, this is a full-blown black comedy, shocking in its descriptions of violence and human stupidity.
The popularity of Ammaniti's books in his native Italy is evidenced by the fact that both these novels have been made into films by Gabriele Salvatores, the director of Mediterraneo, and, here in the UK, Canongate has already bought the rights to his latest novel Che la Festa Cominci (Let the Party Begin).
