Four political prisoners spend their last night before facing the guillotine in the clifftop prison of Santo Stefano. The baron, the student, the poet and the soldier, — each one tells his story in turn, each must grapple with his conscience, to die an honourable death or turn informer?
“Each man’s story, told with such skill and dash that the imagination is immediately caught… The robust sure-footedness of the language, retaining, to the translator’s credit, that spare tautness that is one of the author’s greatest gifts.” – Literary Review
“Teasing, calculated, cunning” — The Times
Gesualdo, a Sicilian, was a teacher by profession, only becoming an author after his retirement in 1976. His first novel, The Plague-Spreader’s Tale, written in 1950 and drawing on his own experience of being confined to a sanatorium shortly after the end of the Second World War, was finally published to great acclaim in 1981, winning the Premio Campiello. Night’s Lies won the Strega Prize in 1988.
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