The Missing Head of Damasceno Monteiro

A literary thriller of heroin rings and headless bodies uncovers social ills and corruption in modern day Portugal, while - as in all of Tabucchi's work - blurring genre boundaries.

Antonio Tabucchi, Italy's premier writer and a best-selling author throughout Europe, draws together Manolo the gypsy, Firmino, a young tabloid journalist with a weakness for Lukács and Vittorini, and Don Fernando, an overweight lawyer with a professed resemblance to the actor Charles Laughton, to solve a murder that leads far up and down Portugal's social ladder. As the investigation leads deeper into Portugal's power structure, the novel defies expectations, departing from the formulaic twists of a suspense story to consider the moral weight of power and its abuse.