SHORTLISTED: DAGGER FOR CRIME FICTION IN TRANSLATION 2022


What would you do if one day you found out the person who raised you is a monster?

Laura disappeared into thin air in 1999, at eight years old. She was found in a metal container, fourteen years later.

Luca is having dinner with his father dinner when they are interrupted by a visit from the carabinieri, who take his father away. Luca can only watch the scene unfold, helpless. The charges brought against esteemed anthropologist Carlo Maria Balestri are extremely grave: multiple counts of abduction, torture, murder, and concealing his victims’ bodies.

What would you do if one day you found out that the person who raised you was a monster? Oxygen is a story of the aftermath of such evil. Balestri’s capture does not end the hell he created. The professor’s perverse experiment continues: he may no longer be able to imprison children in iron boxes, but the legacy of his crimes still reverberates through the lives of all those close to him and his victims. The question that continues to ring out is: who locked up who?

Translated by: Clarissa Botsford