With this triptych of portraits - which hides and reveals a secret self-portrait - Christopher Domínguez Michael adds another fascinating tile to his refined essay mosaic. The luminous aura of literary seduction runs through the author's account of Italian passions, illuminating the masks and chimeras, both imaginary and real, that were embodied in the life and work, strangely crossed, of Gabriele d'Annunzio, Curzio Malaparte and Pier Paolo Pasolini. Portrait, character and ghost offers us a lucid and implacable representation of the crossroads that attracted as a law of gravity to these "artists of modern life", forced to face, each in their own way, the open wound between the mythologies of the past , the wishes of the present and the escapisms of posterity. The critic's deep sensitivity and the collector's happy idiosyncrasy are intertwined and confused in a splendid way in the persuasive framework of a writing that is not afraid to face, with probity and courage, the shadows and specters of an often gloomy and disturbing story.