Thursday, August 29, 2024

Flowers over the Inferno TV series plus Daughter of Ashes (A Teresa Battaglia Novel) by Ilaria Tuti Ekin Oklap (Translator)

 Daughter of Ashes is the third volume of a trilogy by Italian crime \writer Ilaria Tuti, featuring detective Teresa Battaglia, who is suffering from bokth diabetes and the early stages of age-related dementia. The novels are set in and arouond Udine in the far north of Italy, frequently in mountainous areas, and her young and devoted assistant is a prominent feature, along with her other detectives, also devoted to herm and an increasingly hostile boss (I won't go into any details about the boss,m since their back \story is a big part of the novels' development. All the Battaglia books are concerned with both murder and with history, culture, and even folklore of the region. This last in the trilogy is also concerned with some extensive dips into the past of both Battaglia and the Roman history of the area.


The books are compelling and distictive, and the first of them, Flowers over the Inferno, has been made into a TV series by RAI, the Italian national network and it's available with English subtitles (so far onlly on the Australian SBS streaming network, accessible outside Australia with a VPN). The series is very effective in translating the human interactions, especially among the schoolchildren who are a big part of the first novel, and betweenn Battaglia and her young and very attractive assistant Marini (a young Sicilian whose adjustment to the snowy north is a source of some comedy, especially at the beginning).


The crime plots of all three novels are original in concept and in resolution, with the intelligence and wit of Battaglia and the growing confidence of Marini.
It's difficult to describe either version of the series without giving too much away, but I can say that the stories are compellingly told in both media, the novel and the series, and offer an unusual, distinctive experience to both reader and viewer.

2 comments:

Harvee said...

Since the main character is suffering from early dementia, does the series end with the third book, do you know? I checked and see Daughter of Ashes is the fourth and last book in the series. I really enjoyed it. Excellent writing and plot.

Harvee said...

Here is my review of Daughter of Ashes in goodreads, if you are interested. https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/5922651590