Marco Presta: "I tell the story of an Italy lacking in culture and melody."

A "Christmas Carol" without magic, artificially corrected like an out-of-tune voice. This is the image that Marco Presta, renowned author and radio host, has chosen for his modern and irreverent reinterpretation of Dickens's masterpiece. In his new novel for Einaudi, "A Christmas Carol with Autotune," available today, illustrated by Max Paiella, the old and miserly Ebenezer Scrooge becomes Aurelio Scrocchia, a cynical record producer who gets rich producing "the bad Italian music of today." A story that uses the world of music as a metaphor to criticize an entire society, its hypocrisy and cultural poverty.

"The idea came from a suggestion from my editor at Einaudi," Prest explains, adding: "A Christmas Carol in today's Italy can only be a fake carol, with autotune. Autotune is the perfect symbol of today's pop music: a corrector that doesn't actually correct, but disguises. It's a deception." The book thus becomes a personal redemption for the author, who for years, with his show 'Il ruggito del coniglio', has been forced to endure and broadcast songs he doesn't like. "I've finally had the chance to say what I think about this immense fraud that is contemporary Italian pop music," he admits. "Although, to tell the truth, I don't even hold back on the radio," he jokes bitterly.

In the novel, the singers produced by Scrocchia have fictitious names, but the inspiration is real. "Each one is based on a real singer," Presta reveals. "Part of the game for the reader will be guessing them." And the critics don't spare Italy's most important stage. "I saw the last Sanremo Festival and, why not say it, there wasn't a single decent song," he states bluntly. "The melody is missing; it doesn't exist anymore. There are only stadium chants. Italian music today is an immense undertow of garbage that overwhelms us and makes us worse." Presta's loneliness sometimes makes him doubt himself. "Sometimes I feel dramatically alone in this battle, so much so that I think I'm in the wrong. Then I turn on the radio again and convince myself I'm in the right."

According to the author, music is just the tip of the iceberg of a deeper malaise. "It could have been politics, cinema... Italian cinema is generally bad, television is awful, and even literature doesn't excite me. We live in a historically unhappy moment." And on social media, the commentary is succinct: "They are a tragedy. The human race will become extinct, and only social media will remain." In this scenario, the collective conscience is 'numb'. Unlike the original Scrooge, tormented by the ghosts of his past, his Aurelio Scrocchia needs an external jolt: "In the book, it's an alkaloid, which he takes unwittingly, and which paradoxically has a positive effect: it awakens his conscience."

A scathing criticism that also targets 'political correctness', defined as "largely an expression of hypocrisy. We are all against sexism, then a singer comes out with violently sexist lyrics who, however, 'belongs to the group' and suddenly shouldn't be censored. It's a mockery. A respectable gentleman, born many years ago, said: 'Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites.' There are still so many of them." And if he had to give advice to the current artistic director of Sanremo, after his redemption? The answer is blunt: "Resign. It's the only sensible thing to do, and, moreover, no one ever does it in Italy."

Max Paiella's illustrations give a face to this cynical world and this difficult redemption. His work bridges classical iconography with a modern sensibility. "The starting point was Arthur Rackham, one of the first illustrators of A Christmas Carol," Paiella explains. "We tried to recapture some of those stylistic elements, but combined them with my passion for comics. Frank Miller, José Muñoz, and even Andrea Pazienza are all there." For Paiella, who defines himself as "an illustrator whose desperation led him to become a comedian," this book is a return to his first love. The biggest challenge? "The first panel: finding a compromise between the frenzy of Via Condotti at Christmas and this modern Scrooge who loathes everyone, but especially himself. Illustrating this was like creating the storyboard for a great Christmas movie, telling the story of a search for self in an era in which all of humanity seems to have lost." (by Loredan Errico)