British hardcover edition. Click on the cover to download the picture at high res (300 dpi, jpg + zip, 216 kb)

'There is all a best-selling novel is about: Impossible love stories, enduring friendship, tangled family relationships... Only, unlike what happens in the typical North-American flick, this time the good are the "bad", i.e. the poor, the oppressed, the idealists.'
(El Pais, Spain)

> 54 plays with the forms of espionage novel, the noir genre, and social realism. It seeks to transcend those forms, and it does: this is mutant fiction, a living narrative organism composed of various bodies that aim at multiple endpoints. The most accomplished: a spy story on the surface, with an eye on the ordinary citizen, who acts as witness or protagonist of history. This happens at a level where myths - the archetypical hero, but it goes beyond that - are described as doubtful and ambiguous constructions. It makes sense then that Cary Grant reads Casino Royale (the first James Bond novel) with perplexity and amazement, before he meets Marshall Tito and ends up talking with him about the personality cult.'
(Qué Pasa, Chile)

'54...is a sprawling epic... The plot is a formidable feat of imagination that moves restlessly between Bologna, Naples, California, Moscow, Dubrovnik and Marseilles... Daring... A more accomplished piece of work [than Q]... 54's scope is no less ambitious, but has a refreshing lightness of touch. The portrait of a world-weary Cary Grant...is utterly convincing.'
(The Times, UK)

'This new work amply confirms their talent... Utterly convincing. What emerges is an epic about identity and celebrity, communism and corruption... A stupendous, charming, provocative and profound novel. It makes most modern books seem paltry in comparison.'
(Scotland on Sunday)

'Centred around beautifully written human relationships, Wu Ming explore European and American politics and history, weaving distinct narratives (separated by time, place, and characters) together as Don DeLillo did in Underworld. It's an exciting read, not only due to the language and various writing styles but also because of the powerful - and often conflicting - ideas that it contains... It seems like each member of the Wu Ming has been driven on by their peers to take risks and produce their best and most challenging work.' (Clash Magazine, UK)

'54 is a great, sprawling epic. Serious and satirical, it can be read as a spy novel, gangster thriller and political manifesto, with enough scenes of unsavory characters, drug smuggling, shoot-outs, and doomed love affairs to resemble a Romanzo della Polpa (pulp fiction). But this would be a shallow reading - 54 is much more complicated, and simple. At its heart it is a story of the hopes and expectations we have for ourselves and each other, and how the forces of history, life and love can dash and rebuild these.'
(The Philadelphia Inquirer)

'Basically, they’re trying to write V, The Odyssey, Casino Royale, Underworld, Pereira Declares and The Godfather all at once. And have fun with all of them.'
(Bjorn from Stockholm, reviewing 54 on World Literature Forum)

'I’m gonna get this description tattooed on my butt!'
(Wu Ming 2 from Bologna, commenting on the quote above)


A Class Apart, that is: A Hundred Years of Cary Grant

Cary Grant: Style as a Martial Art. A conversation with Wu Ming 1

Reviews of 54

The Wikipedia entry for 54

54 on David Dodge's website
David Dodge (1910-1974) was the author of the novel To Catch a Thief on which Hitchcock's film was based.

SHAUN WHITESIDE (a Wu Ming 6 Honoris Causa) Born in County Tyrone, Northern Ireland, in 1959. Shaun Whiteside has translated many books from French, German, Italian and Dutch, including works by Freud and Nietzsche, Michèle Desbordes, Amélie Nothomb and Giorgio Pressburger. His translation of Magdalene the Sinner by Lilian Faschinger won the Schlegel-Tieck Prize in 1997. His translation of our novel Q was a finalist for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize in 2003. 'Superb' is the more common adjective used by reviewers to describe his translation work.