The presentation of the two books, entitled Almanacco dell’orrore popolare (2021) and Almanacco dell’Italia occulta (2022), was chaired by Massimo Scorsone, editor of Mondadori’s popular book series ‘Oscar Draghi’, and was also attended by the co-editor Prof. Fabio Camilletti (University of Warwick) as well as by Franco Pezzini, the renowned independent scholar specialising in Victorian and horror studies.
The two highly successful books, which occupied the second and first position respectively in the top-ten parade of the RAI programme ‘Wonderland’, cast an innovative light on Italian society and show how magic, paganism, alternative spiritualities and the Occult in general are inherently rooted in the country’s mediatic expressions. In permeating literature, cinema, comics, journalism, music, and mass entertainment in the broadest sense possible, the Occult thus shapes an ever-metamorphosing imaginary and merges inextricably ancestral folklore and marketing-oriented popular culture.
