This book is a masterpiece of the Italian contemporary literature. Flaiano wrote only one novel - the one I'm reviewing - but he's world wide famous because he is the scriptwriter and the screenplayer of Federico Fellini's masterpieces, such as "La Dolce Vita", "I Vitelloni". The novel was written in 1948, in Milan, in only three months. The Italian original title "Tempo d'uccidere" is a quotation taken from the Bible and it litterarly means "Time to kill". It's the weird story of a young Italian officer (based on Flaiano's experieces) portraited on the background of the Italian-Ethipian war in 1936. One day the officer suffers of a terrible tooth-ache and he's compelled to set out to seek for a dentist, but, on his way to the hospital, he meets by chance an Ethipian woman: it's the very begining of "the short cut" towards the discovery of human nature.