An explosive “erotic novel” written by a woman who has been thrust into the never-ending saga of sex and the Government of Silvio Berlusconi, has tongues wagging over whether the book is not fiction but true.
A supermarket checkout girl and a nondescript government minister meet by chance. They begin a torrid love affair and she is offered a seat in Parliament, but before she sets out on the political stage her lover dumps her and arranges for the seat to be given to another of his mistresses.
Just another tale of everyday Italian politics, you might think, but this is Maria Gabriella Genisi, 44, said that she wrote The Goldfish Doesn’t Live Here Anymore after being dropped by the People of Liberty (PdL), Mr Berlusconi’s party, as a candidate in last year’s national election. She claims that she held discussions about a safe seat, but was quoted as saying it was given to a top party official’s lover.
Ms Genisi tried to tone down the extent to which the novel mirrored her own life, even though Il Riformista newspaper quoted her as saying that she had decided to write the novel “after I was promised the candidacy and it didn’t happen.”
She denied she had been passed over in favour of another woman and called her work a “literary invention”, but it has caused a fever of speculation over the real identity of the minister. It has also reignited the row between Left and Right over Mr Berlusconi’s attempts to field showgirls as candidates in the recent European elections, a tactic derided by his wife, Veronica Lario, as “shameless trash.”
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