Written by a Sicilian and set in Sicily, this book tells the bizarre story of Antonio, a young lady-killer whose dashing good looks allow him to exploit to the full the local conventions about male sexual prowess — the idea of the gallo (cock). Returning from Rome after a five-year absence, he immerses himself in provincial life and is soon engaged to Barbara, a rich woman captivated by his magnetism. But the outwardly happy marriage soon collapses, revealing to one and all Antonio’s misfortune: beneath the polished facade, the great seducer is in fact impotent. The disclosure of his brazen strategy of deceit ostracises him and leaves him without any identity except that of a man who is not ‘a real man’. His fall from grace affects his whole family, exposing the vanity and moral bankruptcy of a society founded on an empty ideal of masculine sexual supremacy.


In the novel, Brancati casts a slyly ironic gaze over the phenomenon of sexual conceit known as gallismo, which allows the male to establish his dominion over the female by virtue of aggression and power on a sexual level. In this he illustrates the narcissistic vitalism employed to camouflage a profound moral deficiency, the unresolved cultural problem of a society that is incapable of maintaining substantial ethical values. This book strengthens our knowledge of a reality and custom whose survival is more widespread than one might imagine.

‘That was the most glorious period of my life. I was twenty-four, the women were besotted over me, and I, once a week, was able to make one of them swoon with delight. The very next day began the lies and subterfuges because at all costs I had to avoid going back and sleeping with the lady... How many times I fled to Naples and a hotel on the sea-front, to be tormented by the mandolins outside the restaurants and the smack of kisses from behind closed doors, while I waited for my desire, spread so evenly throughout my body as to seep placidly from my hand whenever I shook that of a woman, to condense into the place which is made for it.... I have never mentioned these things to anyone, but I’ve written them down and copied them countless times on sheets of paper which I then burnt: by now I know them by heart.’ p151