Inspired by newspaper clippings he had kept about two former African dictators accused of cannibalism, journalist Riccardo Orizio set out to track down tyrants around the world who had fallen from power—to see if they had gained any perspective on their actions, or if their lives and thoughts could shed any light on our own. The seven encounters chronicled in Hablando con el diablo reveal Orizio’s gift as an observer and his skill at getting people to reveal themselves. They are also, each of them, memorable stories in their own right.
By turns chilling and comical, rational and absurd, Hablando con el diablo brings back into focus forgotten history and people we have viewed as evil incarnate. Stripped of their power and titles, they are oddly human, and in Orizio’s hands, their stories, and his own, are compulsively readable.