Sometimes one look is all it takes to change your life. One only, like Giovanni Vigo’s glance at an attractive young woman whom, for some reason, he instinctively followed into the restrooms at Milan’s State University, as she was going in with another man. And now Giovanni is the only witness to a murder of which there is no trace: a crime that turns into an obsession, above all when the horrendously mutilated corpse of the man is found. But to track down Mia, the elusive, mysterious beauty, Vigo’s friend Simmel, crime reporter, will step in to help him out.

Gianni Canova is a film critic and professor of film history and criticism at Milan’s IULM University of Languages and Communication. Founder and editor of the monthly Duel (now Duellanti), in 2002 he supervised the publication of the Encyclopedia of Cinema by Garzanti (the so-called Garzantina). Canova’s articles on film and screenings have appeared in Il Manifesto, la Repubblica, the Corriera della Sera supplement Sette, and Indro Montanelli’s la Voce. Currently he writes and hosts the Sky Cinema program “Il Cinemaniaco” and writes a film column for Saturno, the cultural supplement of the daily Il Fatto. Palpebre is Canova’s first novel, written in 2009 and republished with a new afterword in 2023.