A Coin in Nine Hands
This novella is set in Rome in 1933, the eleventh year of the Fascist dictatorship in Italy. There, during the space of a day, a ten-lire coin passes through the hands of nine people – including an old artist, a prostitute, and a would-be assassin of Mussolini – and becomes the symbol of contact between human beings, each lost in his own passions and in his intrinsic solitude.