Abstract

Over the past forty years, a vast corpus of Gadda manuscripts (published and unpublished texts, working notebooks) have re-emerged. During this time, though, no manuscript draft of the "Pasticciaccio" was traced. This great lacuna prevented scholars from providing answers to such crucial questions as: did Gadda plan to complete the novel? Who murdered Liliana Balducci? Who were the murderer's accomplices? The recent discovery of a section of the "Pasticciaccio" 's genetic dossier allows us to propose, at long last, some answers, and above all to read the splendid, 'imperfect', conclusion which Gadda wrote in the late forties, after publishing the first version of the novel in 'Letteratura' (1946).