It’s not a hobby for him, and it’s not an expedient for someone bored after trying tango lessons or an acting course. It’s a job. The only one he was able to invent after he was fired without warning at fifty-two. Tommasoni Egidio, with a wife and a kid to support, makes a living by being a clown: a temporary solution that’s lasted three years. Behind that big red fake nose, he cultivates his idiosyncrasies: he watches his city become increasingly evil day after day… just like him. Böll’s young clown smelled things on the phone but nothing escapes Tommasoni Egidio’s sensitivity sharpened by his daily ordeals. But in the suitcase Tommasoni always drags around along with his clown gear, he keeps a secret that is perhaps a way out of his situation. Merciless and tragicomical, pungent and politically incorrect, intense and irreverent, the heroic protagonist of this book calls by name everyhing that we pretend not to see in this world of fake wellbeing. And he gets to the heart of the problem with the power of a liberating laugh.