Italian · Intermediate
Read Il cappello del prete in Italianwith every sentence explained
English title: The Priest's Hat
Emilio De Marchi · 1888
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About the book
Il cappello del prete by Emilio De Marchi was first published in 1888. In Passage you read the full text in the original Italian, marked intermediate and filed under mystery and crime and thriller and suspense. It runs to about 56,900 words.
The perfect crime. The perfect alibi. One forgotten hat.
Baron Carlo Coriolano di Santafusca is a Neapolitan aristocrat with an old name, an empty purse and a mountain of gambling debts. Everyone in Naples knows that the miserly priest Cirillo keeps a fortune in cash. The baron, who believes in neither God nor conscience, makes a cold decision: he lures the priest to his crumbling country villa, kills him and hides the body where no one will ever look.
The plan works flawlessly. Except for one detail: the priest's hat. As the baron tries to enjoy his new wealth, that black hat keeps turning up, and with it a fear he cannot reason away.
Published in 1888, Emilio De Marchi's gripping psychological thriller is often called the first Italian giallo. A study of guilt worthy of Dostoevsky, it was filmed in 1944 and adapted for television.
- Author
- Emilio De Marchi
- First published
- 1888
- Language
- Italian
- Level
- Intermediate
- Genre
- Mystery and Crime, Thriller and Suspense
- Length
- About 56,900 words
How it opens
Il barone Carlo Coriolano di Santafusca non credeva in Dio e meno ancora credeva nel diavolo; e, per quanto buon napoletano, nemmeno nelle streghe e nella iettatura.
A vent’anni voleva farsi frate, ma imbattutosi in un dotto scienziato francese, un certo dottor Panterre, perseguitato dal governo di Napoleone III per la sua propaganda materialistica ed anarchica, colla fantasia rapida e violenta propria dei meridionali, si innamorò delle dottrine del bizzarro cospiratore, che aveva anche una testa curiosa, tutta osso, con due occhiacci di falco, insomma un terribile fascinatore.
Reading Il cappello del prete in Passage
Passage sets the book as a quiet, paginated reader in Italian. Read at your own pace, and when a sentence stops you, tap it. You get:
- a natural translation of that exact sentence,
- a short note on the grammar, in plain words,
- the key words, which you can save with the sentence they came from,
- all of it in English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Turkish or Portuguese, whichever you read best.
It's marked intermediate: comfortable once everyday Italian feels familiar, with the harder sentences one tap away. The words you save come back later in short review games, so the book keeps teaching after you close it.
