Espasmo

Set against the tranquil shores of Lake Geneva in the autumn of 1894, the novel opens with a shocking gunshot that shatters the peace of a summer villa. The scene reveals the lifeless body of a Milanese countess and the trembling, blood‑streaked face of her companion, a exiled Russian prince involved in revolutionary circles. From this gruesome tableau, the story launches into an investigation that draws the curious and the cosmopolitan alike into the tangled lives of refugees, political idealism and forbidden love.

Against the backdrop of a Swiss city, the narrative pits the rigid demands of political duty against a fierce, almost animalistic passion that threatens to consume its bearers. Di Roberto’s prose blends harsh realism with a luminous, aristocratic elegance, rendering each confrontation as both a psychological duel and a vivid tableau of early‑twentieth‑century turbulence. Listeners are invited to follow the early investigations and the haunting recollections that begin to unravel the mystery, all while feeling the electric tension that drives the characters toward an inevitable, though still uncertain, climax.