At the end of World War II, Rome is in ruins, poverty is all around, the Germans are still in town and the police are trying to stop the thefts that are happening at every turn. On a gloomy July morning, a boy from the suburbs, Ricceto, goes to church to receive his First Communion. Before long, he robs a blind beggar and uses the money to hire a boat to go on a cruise on the Tiber with his friends...
The famous Italian film director Pier Paolo Pazolini (1922-1975) tells the story of ordinary people in 1950s Rome in his novel "Street Boys". The novel does not fawn over its narrative, but depicts post-war life in a way that is at once poignant and poetic.
Pazzolini is a more unique personality of the 20th century - a film director and screenwriter, poet, novelist and playwright, also active as an actor, painter, politician, journalist and critic. Director of more than twenty films, both fiction and documentary, co-author of several screenplays, author of several novels and collections of poems. When he entered the cinema in the 1960s, he began to realise his peculiar ideas, which he had hitherto pursued in literature. Controversial in Italy because of his explicitly erotic and naturalistic style and his communist views. He died, brutally murdered in circumstances that are still unclear.
This is the first opportunity for Latvian readers to get acquainted with the literary work of a director well known to cinema-goers.
Translated from the Italian by Liv Trekter.