What Elsa Told Me
Some conversations can only happen at night.
There is a bookshop in Bari, the Apulian city on Italy’s Adriatic coast, that opens only after dark. It is called Osteria del Caffellatte, an improbable, almost magical place. One night in May, a little after one in the morning, Guido Guerrieri arrives there almost by chance. A brilliant defence lawyer, known for standing up for the most vulnerable, Guido is now a melancholic, elegant man in his late fifties, restless and unable to sleep. He is a close friend of the bookseller, Ottavio.
A book launch is underway. The author is Elsa Corsini, a seventy-two-year-old philosopher whose new book is called On the Good Use of Fear. At her feet lies Bartleby, her pit bull.
When the last customer leaves, Guido and Elsa stay behind. There is a bottle of white wine on the table. They begin to talk. They talk until dawn.
What Elsa Told Me is the record of those hours: two people who have never met telling each other things they have never told anyone else. The kind of intimacy that can sometimes arise between strangers precisely because there is nothing to preserve between them, no history, no future, no need to protect the person they have always been. When morning comes, they will walk out of the bookshop and become strangers again.
The night is not merely the setting of What Elsa Told Me. It is the condition that makes the novel possible.
Before she leaves, Elsa writes a dedication to Guido in her own book. One word: Elsewhere.
Publication date: 27.10.2026
Publisher: Einaudi Stile Libero
Number of Pages: 176
Country: Italy
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