The Missing Head of Damasceno Monteiro

A literary thriller of heroin rings and headless bodies uncovers social ills and corruption in modern day Portugal, while—as in all of Tabucchi's work—blurring genre boundaries.

Antonio Tabucchi, Italy's premier writer and a best-selling author throughout Europe, draws together Manolo the gypsy, Firmino, a young tabloid journalist with a weakness for Lukács and Vittorini, and Don Fernando, an overweight lawyer with a professed resemblance to the actor Charles Laughton, to solve a murder that leads far up and down Portugal's social ladder.

As the investigation leads deeper into Portugal's power structure, the novel defies expectations, departing from the formulaic twists of a suspense story to consider the moral weight of power and its abuse.