The first novel by Alessandro Baricco is also the first in quality, if you believe numerous critics. Before us is a world of crazy inventors, passionate lovers, high-speed locomotives and glass palaces. Strange people in strange circumstances, coming to a strange ending - all capped by the equally unusual title "Castles of Wrath." Semi-Kafkaesque visions converging at one point and then continuing in the form of a geometrically flawless straight line: Baricco unerringly chose a course that would make him one of the leading European authors of our time.