violent life

Author's name: Pasolini

Violent Life tells the story of the life and death of Tomaso, a street kid who ran with communists, fascists, and thieves at other times. Pasolini tells his story in a series of connected episodes, each of which could be a short story.

This novel is no exception to Pasolini's other novels, in which he tends to adopt the colloquial language of slum dwellers to depict the world of crime and gangs that invade the center and inhabit the margins.

His heroes are the mischievous youths from the suburbs and slums, the marginalized and the bottom-dwellers who inhabit the shacks on the outskirts of Rome, where infrastructure is nonexistent, disease is rampant, ignorance is rampant, and fascism is rife. His narrative focuses on tracing the protagonist's paths from childhood, accompanying him throughout these places, so that we can see how he spends his time between the bar and the street, how he meets his lover in meadows and at the cinema, and how his consciousness matures between prison and hospital.