Invictus. Cristiano Parafioriti

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      Invictus

      Cristiano Parafioriti © 2021

      Cover photo

      Anna Francica

      Layout and editing

      Stefania Salerno

      CRISTIANO PARAFIORITI

      INVICTUS

      NOVEL

      With an introductory essay by Antonio Baglio

      Translated by Giovanna Bongiovanni

      TABLE OF CONTENT

       AUTHOR’S NOTE

       INTRODUCTORY ESSAY

       PART I

       I

       II

       III

       IV

       V

       VI

       VII

       VIII

       IX

       PART II

       I

       II

       III

       IV

       V

       VI

       VII

       VIII

       IX

       X

       XI

       XII

       XIII

       XIV

       XV

       XVI

       XVII

       XVIII

       PART III

       I

       II

       III

       IV

       V

       VI

       VII

       VIII

       NEMESIS

       ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

      Out of the night that covers me,

      Black as the pit from pole to pole,

      I thank whatever gods may be

      For my unconquerable soul.

      In the fell clutch of circumstance

      I have not winced nor cried aloud.

      Under the bludgeonings of chance

      My head is bloody, but unbowed.

      Beyond this place of wrath and tears

      Looms but the Horror of the shade,

      And yet the menace of the years

      Finds and shall find me unafraid.

      It matters not how strait the gate,

      How charged with punishments the scroll,

      I am the master of my fate,

      I am the captain of my soul.

      (Invictus, William Ernest Henley)

      To Don Ture Di Nardo “Pileri”

      to my grandfather Calogero Barone “Ccanino”

      to all veterans

      and to those who have never returned

AUTHOR’S NOTE

      Nino Amadore, my friend and esteemed journalist of “Il Sole 24 Ore”, wrote in one of his articles: “Cristiano Parafioriti is the founder of a new literary genre, Sicilian minimalism, where the stories of a country and its people become the stories of the whole world”.

      I jealously guard this definition in my memory and heart, and the more stories I write, the more I find myself in those words.

      My work is born in my small and beloved village, Galati Mamertino, a mountain village perched on the Nebrodi mountains in Sicily. Galati is a melting pot of many other tiny places and many other realities that shine with their own light, each with stories to tell, with their people, with their own myths.

      This novel was born from one of these magical corners, San Giorgio, a remote and by now an uninhabited village, of which today only a few abandoned