Saltimbocca in salsa di soia. Cinacittà di Tommaso Pincio

«Tutti andavano via, ma io sono rimasto qui, nell’eterna canicola, come un animale raro in mezzo a migliaia di bestie cinesi tutte uguali». Set in a very near future, when global warming has turned the Italian capital into a tropical city and all the Italians have moved to the North, Cinacittà is the story of the “Last Roman”, a wannabe artist and decadent intellectual, who poses as the hero of a new dolce vita. By following his idle wanderings through the city at night, we contemplate a very strange and yet very familiar city, occupied by thousands of Chinese immigrants who apparently don’t fear the heat: the old colonizers are now the colonized. Published in 2008, Pincio’s novel materializes ironically the fears of dispossession of a Western (and more specifically Italian) culture which feels exhausted and guilty. It also highlights very effectively all the linguistic and cultural stereotypes which shape the xenophobic discourse on the ‘new invaders’. The article aims at analysing some of the narrative and representative strategies through which the author undertakes his political and cultural critique to this phenomenon, and more in general to the myths and certainties of the called ‘average Italian’ – this dull, coarse creature.