Gianluca Morozzi was born in Bologna in 1971, where he lives today. His most recent titles include ''L'era del porco'' and ''Blackout'', the first roman noir written by Morozzi, better known as a cutting edge satirist and music critic. He is usually compared to Nick Hornby but in ''Blackout'' he evokes (in a very Italian way) the satirical touch of Ben Elton's novel ''Popcorn''.

Gianluca Morozzi

Blackout

Product Description: Bologna in August. Unbearable heat, an empty city. Claudia is a young student in a hurry to return home from her work as a waitress and get out of the skimpy uniform she hates. Tomas is a young man on his way to elope to Amsterdam with his girlfriend Francesca. Aldo is a husband and father with an uncanny resemblance to Elvis Presley, anxious to get to an apartment filled with guilty secrets. All three have an urgent need to be somewhere else. Instead they are trapped in a lift in a deserted building on a holiday weekend. Like three wasps in an upturned glass... and one of the trio is a serial killer.

This dark, twist-packed psychological thriller in the style of Phonebooth has been adapted as a US film to be released in the autumn of 2008, starring Amber Tamblyn and directed by cult Mexican auteur Rigoberto Castañeda.

Synopsis: Bologna on the 15th of August. Unbearable heat, an empty city. Claudia is a young student in a hurry to return to the hospital bedside of her dying grandmother. She works as a waitress and is still wearing her Lara Croft uniform as she rushes home to change. Tomas is a young punk on his way to elope with his girlfriend Francesca and rescue her from the physical abuse of her drunken father. Aldo is a husband and father with guilty secrets that must be erased from his apartment before his wife and daughter get there. He labours under an uncanny resemblance to Elvis. All three have an urgent need to be somewhere else. But instead they are trapped in a lift on this holiday weekend, and the building is deserted.Then the jeopardy massively escalates in this dark, twist-packed psychological thriller: one of the trapped trio is revealed to be a serial killer. As becomes evident in the second half of the novel, this is also a biting satire of a society saturated with, and obsessed by, reality television. The US film of "Blackout" (to be distributed by Universal Films) is in post-production.

It is by Mexican director Rigoberto Castaneda who directed last year's excellent Mexican/Spanish co-production "Kilometro 31", screened at the London Film Festival.

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