It's a stormy night in Mantua and a woman is walking in the park of Piazza Pannone. She finds a bag on the ground. What’s inside? According to the writer Joël Dicker (The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair) this could be the perfect start for a thriller. In the wonderful setting of Mantova's Piazza Castello, the Swiss author discusses his new book A Wild Animal with Italian author Alessia Gazzola. The novel opens with two thieves about to rob a jeweller's on a quiet summer day in Geneva. Not so far from there, a woman is celebrating her 40th birthday with her husband. The two couples, apparently so distant from one another, will collide and realize they are not so different after all.

With a time jump and a plot twist, Dicker’s pages highlight the importance of following your own instinct, either pushed by fear or trepidation. It is when we truly connect with ourselves, says the author, that we awaken our inner wild animal, our most primordial essence. In his new thriller, Dicker focuses on the conflict between the characters’ real nature and the appearance they want to show to the world. He does that using a unique writing style that mixes the past, the present and the future in a whirlwind of events. It is only in the past that we can find the answers for the present, says the author.

‘So, which wild animal do you feel like?’ asks Gazzola to Dicker. A migratory bird, replies the author, confessing he likes the animal because it is everything he is not: a tireless traveller that is not afraid to leave the nest. What is certain, however, it is that also in his latest book Dicker followed his true nature and his thriller instinct.