“I want readers to feel the unease of my stories. The book should follow you, wherever you go.” Speaking is Donato Carrisi, who has just published his new novel, The Orchid’s Lie, a thriller that begins with a very dramatic and bloody scene. A massacre occurs in a red farmhouse, in the middle of nowhere: a distraught father is arrested after killing his wife and three children in their sleep. «He gave himself up, he confessed everything – says the author of Martina Franca – his motives are unknown and will not be known, they remain mysterious. But everything takes a backseat in this story that remains identical from beginning to end.”
This is an unusual thriller, don’t you think?
“Usually people think that the truth will mutate, change shape. In reality I tell the same story in different ways and, while telling you the truth, I make you change your perception of what happened. And in the end it is the reader who decides which truth, or which version is preferable. This is what often happens to us in the news, for example in the Garlasco case.”
What does it mean?
“We have a new truth brought before us now. And we are called to choose. We have not acquitted Alberto Stasi, we have not shouted about the innocence of the old perpetrator. If Andrea Sempio had been arrested years ago and now a thesis emerged that it was his girlfriend, we might also side with this thesis. It depends on which story is told first. If a third suspect is found, we will probably forget about the Stasi and Sempio, because what interests us is not the truth, but what is new.”
This time there is also a kind of “book within a book”. Why?
“I wanted to tell the story in the first person, but then I realized that my voice was too distracting. So I created another voice, that of a writer who wrote a novel called Labia sericea.”
Another variety of orchid, you write, that is always described but never shown in reality, right?
“You don’t know whether these flowers are real or fake. It’s like the whole novel: what’s true and what’s false? Do you know what happens? Many readers get to the end of the book and search the Internet, hoping to find a real case. That’s exactly what I wanted, for these doubts to remain. You know, this is a very political book, for me…”
Why political?
“It is no coincidence that in the era of Trump, in America, the most censored writer is Stephen King. Did he know? And do you know why? Because if you write a book against racism, no one will pay attention. But King, who has long fought against racism, did the same thing through his books. It’s always been like this. We genre writers are persecuted, but we are also the ones who manage to communicate certain values, wage certain struggles through fictional stories and bring them to the attention of even those who don’t want to read about them.” certain topics.”
In this particular case, what are you fighting for?
“This book contains social accusations, like The Girl in the Mist, when I criticize the world of media. And in this book I talk about our attitude towards truth and lies. As I said before, we are not interested in the truth, but in what is new. We are surrounded by fake news. But no one protests. In fact we allow ourselves to be indoctrinated by America, scolded by Vice President JD Vance who says: “freedom of speech, freedom of opinion”, meaning the freedom to fake something”.
Is the classic locked door mystery your thing, or something different?
«In reality the room is not closed at all, but open to everyone’s view. So you have the solution at your fingertips, only you have to accept it. This is the first step, acceptance. Often we do not accept the answers that are presented to us.”
What is the real evil of our time?
“Abandonment”.
Indifference to the suffering of others?
“Towards anything. Everything slides around us. Previously we had a dose of cynicism, which somehow saved us, made us more human. But now we don’t even have that anymore. We emptied ourselves of everything. We live parallel lives.”
And why do you think so?
“The internet has deceived us. Social media is fooling us. We have completely lost our perception of reality. We also tend to believe absurd things, which we never believed until a few years ago. There is no more investigation, just let the fake news unfold. But the truth is not something that is offered to you: you have to go and look for it. And that requires effort: education, reading. Instead we want the quick truth, which is ChatGPT, Google, Wikipedia. We believe that information is that. But no. We are no longer willing to compare various news versions, looking for sources. Artificial intelligence is already manipulating us.”
Are we also manipulated by algorithms?
“Of course, think about chatbots, which sometimes get us into heated arguments. Because social media profits by stoking our anger.”
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