Part one: those who know say nothing: those who speak do not know -- Part two: I went mad, with long intervals of horrible mental sanity -- Part three: all cities stink in the summer.

Southern Italy, the 1980s. On a hot summer's night under a full moon, far from the outlying neighborhoods of a southern Italian metropolis, Clara stumbles naked, dazed, and bloodied down a major highway. When she dies no-one is able to say exactly how or why, but her brother cannot free himself from her memory or from the questions surrounding her death. The more he learns about her life and death, the more he uncovers the moral decay at the core of his family's ascent to social prominence. At once an intimate family saga, a history of an entire region, and a portrait of the moral and political corruption of a whole society, Ferocity is an exhilarating, ambitious, and vivid work of fiction by Italy's foremost literary novelist. -- amazon.com

Translated from the Italian.