This has a cynical, brittle, world-weary tone that seems very typical of the 20s and 30s. The obvious explanation would be that it was the psychological impact of the Great War… which seems plausible. It’s a fairly dark view of human nature: lustful, jealous, manipulative, untrustworthy, superficial, pleasure-seeking; but it makes for an entertaining read. All the sex and drugs must have been rather shocking at the time, and the Catholic Church apparently put the book on its banned list, but it’s not actually very explicit.

I’m glad I didn’t read the afterword until afterwards, because it turns out that ‘Pitigrilli’ was a pretty unpleasant human being, which doesn’t make the book any better or worse but might have lessened my enjoyment of it.