La giostra dei criceti

La giostra dei criceti recounts a robbery and grand scheme. Four thugs of the Roman mala, René, Franco, Cinese, and Cencio, set up a bank robbery, but something goes wrong. Meanwhile in the palaces of power, in the offices of the Treasury Ministry, some bureaucrats organize a hallucinatory plot to drastically solve the pension problem. Between these two seemingly out of touch worlds, between the center and the periphery, at the top and the bottom of the social ladder, everyone is looking for the same thing: the ultimate big score, the one that fixes you forever. In Manzini's world, evil, violence, vulgarity, conceit, spare no one. Whether it is an Inps employee who thinks he is a vigilante, the generals of the Secret Service, dark and unmentionable characters, the most ramshackle small-time bandits. Dictating the action is always the fever of wealth, the eagerness of the sneak, the mirage of the "breakthrough." No one is really a decent person, a citizen in good standing, not even the elderly pensioners who on the strength of a secure monthly allowance think only of themselves, or the resentful young people. Everyone is trying to outwit the other, just to stay ahead, just to grab an advantage in the struggle for survival. There is running and chasing each other, like on a wheel, between comic and tragic, comedy and noir. Toward the final bang.


Antonio Manzini was born in Rome in 1964.
He is an actor, screenwriter and writer.
He graduated from the Silvio d'Amico National Academy of Dramatic Art in Rome in 1988.
He has written screenplays for Alex Infascelli (Il siero della vanità, 2004) and Gabriele Salvatores (Come Dio comanda, 2008).
He is the television author of Il delitto di Via poma (directed by Roberto Faenza), numerous episodes of Squadra Antimafia and Il XII apostolo.
He was editor and screenwriter of the series Benvenuti a tavola 2 and Buscetta boss dei due mondi. In 2016, he directed his first film Cristian e Palletta contro tutti.
In 2005 he published his first novel: Sangue Marcio (Fazi editore), followed by La giostra dei criceti (Einaudi, 2007, reissued by Sellerio, 2017) and the short stories: Il mio tesoro and Giochiamo, with Niccolò Ammaniti (published in Crimini and in Il momento è delicato, Einaudi).
For Sellerio, he has published the novels in the successful series of Deputy Police Chief Rocco Schiavone: Pista nera (2013), La costola di Adamo (2014), Non è stagione (2014), Era di maggio (2015) and 7-7-2007 (2016), Cinque indagini romane per Rocco Schiavone (2016), Pulvis et umbra (2017), Fate il vostro gioco (2018), Rien ne va plus (2019), Ah l'amore l'amore (2020) Vecchie conoscenze (2021) and Le ossa parlano (2022). From these novels is based the TV series Rocco Schiavone, on air on Rai 2 since November 2016, of which Antonio Manzini is scriptwriter together with Maurizio Careddu.
Also for Sellerio he published Sull'orlo del precipizio (2015), several short stories later collected in the anthology L'anello mancante (2018), Ogni riferimento è puramente casuale (2019), Gli ultimi giorni di quiete (2020), La mala erba (2022), Elp (2023) and Riusciranno i nostri eroi a ritrovare l’amico misteriosamente scomparso in Sud America? (2023).
For Chiarelettere he published Orfani bianchi (2016).
His novels have been translated in several countries.

His latest novel is Tutti i particolari in cronaca (Mondadori, 2024).

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