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A disastrous earthquake has Naples reeling. While the government scrambles to maintain appearances, poverty and anarchy rack the people on Italy's margins-the illegal immigrants out of Africa, known as the clandestini. One of whom has just been horrifically murdered.
Enter Risto, a rare success story: a refugee from Mogadishu, orphaned in his teens, he's now married the Neapolitan Paola and is the proprietor of a celebrated art gallery. The murder recalls the deaths of his loved ones years ago in Mogadishu, a trauma Risto can't outrun.
Thinking to force the hand of the white authorities, Risto begins his own investigation. But once he starts playing detective, he quickly gets in over his head. Worse, his digging seems to have brought on a strange hallucination: a golden halo only he can see, like a visionary's foretelling of death. Everyone he knows, including the woman he loves, seems to brim with secrets; every discovery Risto makes drives him toward an earthquake of his own.
A portrait of turmoil inside and out, The Color Inside a Melon explores race and class, belonging and exclusion in one of the world's ancient cities. Prolific author, critic, and essayist John Domini delivers an unforgettable portrait of humanity's endless struggle between moving on and making a home.
Enter Risto, a rare success story: a refugee from Mogadishu, orphaned in his teens, he's now married the Neapolitan Paola and is the proprietor of a celebrated art gallery. The murder recalls the deaths of his loved ones years ago in Mogadishu, a trauma Risto can't outrun.
Thinking to force the hand of the white authorities, Risto begins his own investigation. But once he starts playing detective, he quickly gets in over his head. Worse, his digging seems to have brought on a strange hallucination: a golden halo only he can see, like a visionary's foretelling of death. Everyone he knows, including the woman he loves, seems to brim with secrets; every discovery Risto makes drives him toward an earthquake of his own.
A portrait of turmoil inside and out, The Color Inside a Melon explores race and class, belonging and exclusion in one of the world's ancient cities. Prolific author, critic, and essayist John Domini delivers an unforgettable portrait of humanity's endless struggle between moving on and making a home.
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Reviews
"John Domini enters the world of African immigrants in Naples living on the edge of the law, in a gripping, noir-ish thriller written in prose that somehow manages to be both elegant and hard-boiled. An absorbing read."
Salman Rushdie
"The Color Inside a Melon is about a man consumed by secrets and lies in a city on the edge. Disguised as a murder mystery, it twists, turns, then coils into a scorpion's sting."
Marlon James, Booker Prize-winning author of A Brief History of Seven Killings
"A dark, brisk-paced, and intriguing-if sometimes slightly ungainly-hybrid... A dark, buzzing, sometimes-chaotic literary noir written in lively and often elegant prose with an intriguing meditation on immigration and assimilation at its center."
Kirkus Reviews