Salvatore Requirez's The Stain

Prince Alfonso Montero, kidnapped by Tunisian corsairs, manages to free himself and return home after twenty years of captivity in Africa. He finds his city changed and, above all, discovers that someone has taken possession of his identity, his family, and everything that once was his. Also concerned for the son he has never known, he is oppressed by the impostor's power and forced to live under a false name. His father's will, however, illuminates him about an unknown past and an enigma that will turn events around. Stories of crimes, loves, corruption, and betrayals intertwine with real news events thanks to a temporal reconstruction based on the diaries of the Marquis of Villabianca, a refined Sicilian historian. The impostor will be exposed after long hardships and difficulties, but the prince's suffering is far from over. The agonizing pressure of the morality of the time will forever mark his life, in the most painful way possible. Using authentic language, drawn from formulas and documents of the era, enriched with vernacular idioms, Requirez gives us another intense historical novel that offers multiple reflections. A journey far back in time, a glimpse of 18th-century Sicily, which reveals how certain aspects of life then are still very relevant today.