{"id":75216,"date":"2026-09-28T17:36:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-28T21:36:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/?p=75216"},"modified":"2026-09-28T17:38:58","modified_gmt":"2026-09-28T21:38:58","slug":"october-reading-selection-twenty-days-of-turin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/2026\/09\/28\/october-reading-selection-twenty-days-of-turin\/","title":{"rendered":"Oct.28: Reading group selection: Twenty Days of Turin"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"
\nJoin us Wednesday, October 28<\/strong> at 7 PM<\/strong> for a discussion of The Twenty Days of Turin<\/a><\/em> a novel by Giorgio De Maria. The meeting will be held in person or online via Zoom link sent on the day of the meeting.<\/p>\n

The Reading group meets monthly except for December to discuss world literature in translation. If you’d like to recieve notifications send us your name and email and we’ll add you to the list. Reading group books are discounted 15% from Book Beat and are in stock now.<\/strong>
\n\"\"<\/p>\n

\"\"The Twenty Days of Turin<\/em><\/h2>\n

Giorgio De Maria<\/strong>
\nTranslated by Ramon Glazov<\/p>\n

The Twenty Days of Turin<\/em> begins ten years after a mysterious period of mass insomnia, unexplained murders, and collective psychosis that gripped the city. An unnamed researcher begins investigating what happened, only to discover that Turin’s past may not be as safely buried as everyone would like to believe.<\/p>\n

And then there’s the Library<\/strong>: an institution where people deposit their diaries, thoughts, complaints, fantasies, and private writings, which strangers can pay to read. The promise is connection. The result is something considerably darker.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe prospect of \u2018being read\u2019 quivered in the distance like an enchanting mirage.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Written in 1975 and first published in Italy in 1977, the novel has attracted  attention for its uncanny anticipation of blogs, online forums, and social media. But The Twenty Days of Turin<\/em> is more than a prediction of the internet. It is a surreal literary horror story about isolation, voyeurism, collective fear, memory, and the things a city\u2014or a society\u2014would rather not remember.<\/p>\n

What the reviewers say<\/h3>\n

\u201cThis is a book written in 1975 … yet it grasps the implications of social media in ways cyberpunk never did.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2014 Peter Berard, Los Angeles Review of Books<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u201cNo Gibson, no Sterling, no cyberpunk or spec-fic scribbler of the \u201980s or \u201990s ever captured the poisoned zeitgeist of social media better than this.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2014 Jason Sheehan, NPR<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u201cDe Maria\u2019s reality in The Twenty Days of Turin<\/em> is necessarily askance; even when he\u2019s giving you what appears a natural bit of realism, something is skewed, something sinister, something other.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2014 William Giraldi, Commonweal<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

About the Author<\/h3>\n

Giorgio De Maria<\/strong> (1924\u20132009) was an Italian musician, critic, and novelist whose work achieved global cult status decades after its initial publication. Born in Turin, he co-founded the avant-garde music collective Cantacronache in 1958 alongside intellectuals like Italo Calvino, creating politically charged folk music. He is best remembered for his 1977 dystopian horror masterpiece, The Twenty Days of Turi<\/em>n, written during Italy’s turbulent “Years of Lead.” The novel gained widespread modern acclaim following its 2017 English translation, with critics celebrating it as a stunningly prophetic allegory for the voyeurism, isolation, and collective rage of the social media age.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Join us Wednesday, October 28 at 7 PM for a discussion of The Twenty Days of Turin a novel by Giorgio De Maria. The meeting will be held in person or online via Zoom link sent on the day of the meeting. The Reading group meets monthly except for December to discuss world literature in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":75234,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[759,1064,740],"class_list":["post-75216","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reading-group","tag-book-beat-reading-group","tag-giorgio-de-maria","tag-horror-fiction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75216","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75216"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75216\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/75234"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}