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THE TENTH CIRCLE by Mempo Giardinelli

THE TENTH CIRCLE

by Mempo Giardinelli & translated by Andrea G Labinger

Pub Date: Nov. 1st, 2000
ISBN: 1-891270-10-9

This mordant novella, similar in content and theme to its Argentine author’s prizewinning Sultry Moon (1998), details a crime spree, including multiple murders, undertaken by “respectable” businessman Alfredo Romero and his adulterous lover Griselda—a nastier south-of-the-border Bonnie and Clyde. It’s narrated by Alfredo after he’s been apprehended (and fantasizes both reunion with and vengeance upon the fugitive Griselda)—who expresses both an amoralist’s scorn for moralizing hypocrites (whom he imagines consigned to a “tenth circle” of Dante’s Hell) and the reasonable conviction that ego gratification and wholesale slaughter are, after all, perfectly in keeping with their country’s blood-soaked recent history. More than a bit obvious, but redeemed, and then some, by the narrative’s intensity, velocity, and matter-of-fact black humor. A very accomplished work.