Book review: Dissipatio H.G., Guido Morselli

In review

I’ve come across three book reviews on this and fortunately @_fullybooked has its last stock on sale. Dissipatio H.G. is about a man who under mysterious circumstances is the only man left on earth. In an instant, humanity vanished. It’s not so much the absence of a scientific explanation as it is the melancholic writer’s internal diatribes on philosophy and humanity that gives the book its heft. Surprisingly, reading the book reviews first helped add much-needed (albeit heartbreaking) context to the work: this was the last book Morselli (to himself a “failed” writer, receiving rejection after rejection from Italy’s publishing houses) wrote before he committed suicide in 1973. All his works, including this, were posthumously published. What I love about this was its image of an abandoned city, which eerily echoes the 1985 post-apocalyptic film The Quiet Earth (same premise, different outcome).

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