Publisher Description

God's Dog is Diego Marani's first detective novel, introducing Domingo Salazar, a Dominican monk, who is a Vatican secret agent. Italy is now a theocratic state ruled by the Vatican, whose secret agents are dedicated to root out non-believers and heretics. The sanctity of life is being challenged by a cell of dissidents helping sufferers commit euthanasia.


'The crime genre is thronging with honest, likeable cops working within corrupt regimes but the writers of such novels give themselves a get-out-of-jail-free card by allowing us to sympathise with their conflicted protagonists, chafing against their brutal paymasters. Marani (in Judith Landry's able translation), however, is more audacious, granting his anti-hero a terrifying religious fervour, unquestioning of the status quo. What's more, he is an intelligent, intuitive investigator, skilled at using psychology against his victims. Which is what makes the success of this energetic and trenchant novel all the more impressive, however reptilian its protagonist. Marani's church authorities here propose an interfaith movement called "Bible-Koranism" designed to stamp out secularism; as Salazar calmly explains this historical necessity to non-believers, the reader may hear Marani's warning voice: be aware!'
Barry Forshaw in The Independent

'Here, though the terse economy of detective prose works to move events briskly to their violent conclusion. In this Marani is very well served again by Judith Landry's excellent English translation, which captures both the novel's nod to generic conventions of style, and its stranger little flourishes and apercus.'
Bharat Tandon in The Times Literary Supplement

Notes

A new novel from the author of New Finnish Grammar, which won 3 literary prizes in Italy, translated by Judith Landry. Marani's first detective novel, this introduces Domingo Salazar, a Dominican monk, who is a Vatican secret agent. Italy is ruled by the Vatican, whose agents are dedicated to rooting out non-believers and heretics.

Author Biography

Diego Marani was born in Ferrara in 1959. He works as a senior linguist for the European Union in Brussels.He writes columns for various European newspapers about current affairs in Europanto, a language that he has invented. His collection of short stories in Europanto, Las Adventures des Inspector Cabillot has been published by Dedalus.In Italian he has published seven novels, including the highly acclaimed New Finnish Grammar and The Last of the Vostyachs and his first detective novel, God's Dog. Dedalus will publish The Interpreter in the USA in 2016. Judith Landry was educated at Somerville College, Oxford where she obtained a first class honours degree in French and Italian. She combines a career as a translator of works of fiction, art and architecture with part-time teaching. Her translations for Dedalus are: The House by the Medlar Tree by Giovanni Verga, New Finnish Grammar, God's Dog and The Last of the Vostyachs by Diego Marani, The Mussolini Canal by Antonio Pennacchi, The Devil in Love by Jacques Cazotte, Prague Noir: The Weeping Woman on the Streets of Prague by Sylvie Germain and Smarra & Trilby by Charles Nodier.

Review

"Landry knows her man inside out, having previously given us English versions of Marani's New Finnish Grammar & The Last of the Vostyachs and she imparts a cool detachment to his catechetical Utopia that lifts it above the merely satirical and makes Domingo's hunt genuinely exciting." -- The Tablet

Review Quote

'The good news is that this is the first of a series, and the second has already been written. Heretic that I am, I can't wait.'Nick Lezard's Choice in The Guardian

Excerpt from Book

Chapter 1 'My name is Domingo Salazar, I was born on the feast of Saint Dominic and brought up by the Dominican Fathers. I am a policeman, I see to it that the laws of our Holy Mother Church are respected and I work for the worldwide spread of that same Church. I never knew my parents, but from the colour of my skin I think they must have been Caribbean, or at least of mixed race. The Fathers found me beneath the rubble of the orphanage of the Holy Cross, in Haiti, in 2010, and brought me to Italy. I grew up in the boarding-school run by the Dominican sisters of Saint Imelda, I studied at the patriarchal monastery in Bologna and then at the Papal Police Academy in Rome, which I left with the rank of inspector in the fifth year of the reign of Pope Benedict XVIII.' He had developed this mania for diary-keeping as a result of the time he had spent with the nuns. 'Time to get writing!' the mother superior would say after tea, throwing open the grey door to the wood-panelled main hall. You still wrote with pen and paper in those days, in an exercise-book backed with black cloth which was chained to the desk, and which the sisters would read through later. So this diary had become a detailed account of his life, divided up into years. But Domingo Salazar would always copy out those first same sentences in every new exercise-book he began, as though to remind himself of who he was. It was almost time for his appointment. Outside it was already dark. He had slept much of the afternoon; he had thrown himself on to the bed the moment he'd arrived, without even opening his suitcase. His flight had left at dawn, and he'd spent the whole previous night writing, as he always did. He washed himself in cold water, then shaved and dressed slowly in front of the mirror in the bathroom. He picked up his pistol-case from the chair and strapped it on under his arm. He didn't like the sound of this new mission. He didn't yet know much about it, but hunting down angels of death was a job for an ordinary municipal policeman, not an inspector like himself. Those Free Death Brigades struck him as amateurs, hot-heads with few means and even less experience. For all he knew, they might not even be organized into a proper group; they were stray dogs embarking on wild-goose chases. But orders were orders, and at seven o'clock he would learn further details about his assignment from the Vicar.

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