MY NAME IS RUST

It's a harsh novel, but a necessary one.

It's not read: it's traversed.

It's a story that questions, that makes you uncomfortable, that asks:

"What would you be willing to lose, to be accepted?"

THE STORY.

A boy from the Caltanissetta mafia. A legionnaire without a homeland. A wounded soul. From Sicily to the Caribbean, amidst murders, jungles, inhumane training, and an impossible love, *I Am Rust* tells the story of the escape and metamorphosis of a man who has lost everything, even his name. A brutal and poetic story, where violence is a language, and the only possible redemption comes through memory. Because even rust, sometimes, can save.

"WHY DON'T YOU ENLIST IN THE FOREIGN LEGION?"

Ultimately, it was I who had killed, I who had committed the robberies, I who had done everything I was accused of. And it was I, and I alone, who had to answer for it. Beyond the judgment of others, what mattered was not being afraid of myself. That's why I asked Carmelo if he wanted to join me. I asked him stupidly, without even listening to his answer because I already knew he wouldn't come.

"Who the hell was Enrico Abate anyway, to make me, or rather, to make him keep his name, his life? After all, I had ended so many relationships, or perhaps, better yet, I had never had any. So why couldn't I end a relationship with my own name too? There was no reason why I, my body sparkling with cleverness, couldn't also abandon my name."

WHO IS PIERRE ROUSSEAU?

It's a ballad of the South. Tragic, epic, sorrowful.
Son of a veteran of El Alamein and a devout mother, he grows up where the war never truly ended. He rejects school, rules, and normalcy. Only violence makes him feel alive. So he chooses to erase himself, to be reborn under another name: Pierre Rousseau. In the Foreign Legion he finds order, however ruthless. Where obeying is easier than choosing. But first there's Caltanissetta. A city of sulfur and wind, where he learns omertà and kills for the first time at seventeen. No trauma. No remorse. Just another step into the darkness. And then? Then there's the rest.
You have to read it. All of it.
Because only deep down can you hear that subdued sound that pierces the rust. A voice, a question. Perhaps a hope.

MY NAME IS RUST.

In *My Name is Rust* , I wanted to tell the story of the descent, and perhaps the ascent, of a young man who is running away from himself. From the harshest part of Sicily, traversed by unwritten laws and inherited codes of silence, Pierre (who once was called Enrico) leaves without looking back. He wants to forget, to start over, to become someone else. He does so by enlisting in the Foreign Legion.

But changing your name isn't enough to change your skin.

In the Caribbean, amidst the jungle, through brutal training, fleeting brotherhoods, and pointless battles, Pierre becomes something else. Perhaps a soldier. Perhaps a beast.

What keeps him alive is a love: Susanna, a Venetian prostitute with a sharp tongue and an ancient heart. An impossible love, but a true one. It's a brutal and poetic story, I admit.
But also full of piety.