The Twenty Days of Turin

A Novel

18 November 2025

Territory Rights — Worldwide.

Giorgio De Maria (Author), Ramon Glazov (Translator)

With a Foreword by Jeff VanderMeer

Description

Written during the height of the 1970s Italian domestic terror, a cult novel, with distinct echoes of Lovecraft and Borges, makes its English-language debut

An allegory inspired by the grisly neo-fascist campaigns of its day, The Twenty Days of Turin has enjoyed a cult following in Italy for forty years. Now, in a fretful new age of "lone-wolf" terrorism fuelled by social media, we find uncanny resonances in Giorgio De Maria’s vision of mass fear: a mute, palpitating dread that seeps into every moment of daily existence. With its stunning anticipation of the Internet—and the apocalyptic repercussions of oversharing—this bleak, prescient story is more disturbingly pertinent than ever.
Brilliantly translated into English for the first time by Ramon Glazov, The Twenty Days of Turin establishes De Maria’s place among the literary ranks of Italo Calvino and beside classic horror masters. Hauntingly imaginative, with viscerally chilling prose, the novel is an eerily clairvoyant magnum opus.

Reviews

"In The Twenty Days of Turin, De Maria predicted contemporary society’s loneliness, cruelty, and voyeurism decades early and with unnerving accuracy—a haunting, eerily prescient novel." — Carmen Machado, author of Her Body & Other Parties

"The paranoia of The Twenty Days of Turin calls to mind a work of similar portent: Thomas Pynchon’s sclerotic, satirical 1966 novel, The Crying of Lot 49… De Maria’s novel is a good complement to Pynchon, and perhaps an even more relevant work for our era… De Maria’s arresting vision of social media that commands attention." — Nick Ripatrazone, Commonweal

"The Twenty Days of Turin by Giorgio De Maria is a chilling novel that conjures up the creepy claustrophobia of The Tenant and the mind-bending epic horror of House of Leaves—except spread across an entire city. Odd libraries, uncanny monuments, horrific deaths and terrifying puppet shows…even days later, I’m still flinching at shadows, unable to forget the riveting details of a newly unearthed uncanny classic." — Jeff Vandermeer, The New York Times best-selling author of the Southern Reach Trilogy

"Almost forgotten to the ash heap of collective literary amnesia, Giorgio De Maria’s masterpiece oozes with unsettling creepiness and despair as strange gods play out their violent fantasies in an Italy gone quietly insane. This one will slip its way into your darkest dreams." — Christian Kiefer, author of The Animals

"The Twenty Days of Turin is an unholy masterwork of the macabre, more than just a beautifully terrifying ghost story. A writer of uncanny, occult powers, De Maria has crafted an intensely relevant allegory that will take its rightful place alongside the darkest of Saramago and Poe." — William Giraldi, author of Hold the Dark and The Hero’s Body

Paperback

9781324095514

140 x 210 mm • 224 pages

£10.99

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Ebook

9781631492303

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£19.99

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