Virgil and Palazzo Donn’Anna, the Munaciello and the Devil of Mergellina, the Veiled Christ, and other stories: fifteen tales that retrace Neapolitan places, characters, and episodes, without ever losing that lovely ability to still believe in the marvelous and the fantastic.
Matilde Serao’s curious and passionate gaze borders on mythology as she pursues adventures, romances, and mysteries. Her aim is to offer a portrait of the primary "legends" that, at the end of the nineteenth century, still preserved the intact nostalgia of ancient Parthenope.
It is a city:
"...that was created by love, that lived in the passion of light, of dazzling colors, of violent scents, of nights of romance; a city that lived in the grandiose luxury of nature and in the superb expansion of sentiment".
And even when its days come to an end—should it ever be destroyed by Vesuvius like ancient Pompeii—it would know how to die «dignified, in the sublime and flaming apotheosis of fire.»
Preface by Massimo Andrei.