Santi Laganà
BIOGRAPHY
Santi Laganà was born in 1954 in Reggio Calabria and graduated in Law from the University of Siena in 1978.
As chance would have it, his life took a different path from the one he had dreamed of, setting him on his way to an albeit flattering career in a major Italian bank.
Today, in his buen retiro in the Cerveteri countryside, he can cultivate his lifelong passions with greater commitment: reading, writing and bicycling.
The Iron and Blood Trilogy is his debut in the historical novel genre, and is the result of a passion for the early Middle Ages that has been growing in recent years. The first volume, I giorni del ferro e del sangue (Mondadori, 2020) and the second, Anno mille. The Beginning of the End (Mondadori, 2021) are already out.
PUBLICATIONS
Title:
Anno mille. L’inizio della fine
Publisher:
Mondadori
Release date:
22-06-2021
ISBN:
9788804735205
A.D. 963. Rome experiences one of the most tragic moments in its never-ending history. Civil war looms among the streets and palaces in the anxious wait for Otto the Great to return and impose his law once and for all. The young, faithless Pope’s days are numbered but he is determined to sell his skin dearly. All around is ruin: the city agonizes, the countryside is abandoned to the violence and abuse of gangs of all stripes, there are no rules, and survival is increasingly the first commandment for everyone; for many the only one.
For this is only the beginning of the end of a world that will never be the same again.
It is the world of Anna, who has overcome unspeakable pain and suffering, and now finally lives peaceful days. Unfortunately, however, fate is not yet satisfied with pursuing her, and new terrible pains will once again force her to question her own indomitable existence.
It is the world of Arnolfo, who continues his wandering life as a faithful and stalwart champion of a hopelessly lost cause.
But it is also the world of Ali, a Saracen pirate, of Miguel, a Hispanic petty thief, of Gregorio and Bartolo, two old mercenaries seeking the last shreds of glory, and of so many others who live parallel, distant and different stories that are nevertheless destined to intersect.
Fleeting joys and bloody sorrows await them. United as they are by the will not to surrender to the ignoble reality of their time.
Title:
I giorni del ferro e del sangue
Publisher:
Mondadori
Release date:
16-06-2020
ISBN:
9788804722526
A perverted and corrupt teenager sits on the papal throne, what is left of independent Italy is in disarray torn apart by infighting, and the countryside is a no-man’s land where violence and abuse rule.
Anna is a 15-year-old peasant girl who leads a miserable, subservient existence. When her family is slaughtered and her last brother kidnapped to be enslaved, she decides to continue living to pursue that last shred of affection and, supported by an indomitable will, begins a painful wandering through unknown and hostile lands, amidst merciful aid and fierce violence.
On her tormented journey she will meet a knight with a dark past and an unlikely present, a meek-looking old man who hides unsuspected resources, and a shameless and generous young vagabond-a strange company with whom she will try to do justice all the way into the most secret palaces of Rome.
Set in one of the least known and darkest periods of our History, The Days of Iron and Blood is a fresco without filters or rhetoric of an era that is as brutal as it is fascinating, but also the extraordinary parable of a memorable protagonist: a young woman who in the most macho of worlds does not resign herself to a destiny already written and tenaciously struggles to win the right to a better life.