Fifty-four

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Harcourt, 2005 - Fiction - 549 pages
In Hollywood, Cary Grant has grown weary of cinema's constant glamour, but Her Majesty's Secret Service will break his malaise with a bizarre diplomatic mission. In Naples, Lucky Luciano fixes horse races and launches the global heroin trade. And in Bologna, a bartender searches for true love and his missing communist father.

Set during the height of the Cold War-with the world divided into East and West-54 features Italian partisans, KGB agents, Parisian lowlifes, and cameos by David Niven, Marshal Tito, and Grace Kelly. Wu Ming brings us a cinematic romp that is by turns edgy social satire and modern comic send up.

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About the author (2005)

Wu Ming means no name"-and therefore "anonymous"-in Mandarin Chinese. Four of the five members of the Wu Ming Foundation wrote the novel Q under the pseudonym Luther Blissett. They live in Bologna. A few words from Wu Ming: In January 2000, a fifth person joined the four authors of Q and a new band of authors was born, Wu Ming (chinese for "anonymous"). Since then, we have authored further novels and essays. So far, our major collective effort has been 54, a novel set in 1954, with dozensof lead characters (including actor Cary Grant), also translated in English and several European languages. The book was an inspirational source for the Italian folk-rock band Yo Yo Mundi whose concept album (also titled 54) was released at the beginning of 2004. Because of our position on copyright, our experiments in collective writing, the hundreds of meetings with the readers we held in Italy and abroad and - last but not least - our involvement in social causes Wu Ming is now getting evenmore famous than the LBP ever was. The band's name is meant both as a tribute to dissidents and a refusal of the role of the "Author" as a star."

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