Former library director Marino Massimo De Caro is accused of theft and embezzlement of thousands of volumes of rare books, including “centuries-old editions of Aristotle, Descartes, Galileo and Machiavelli” from the Girolamini Library in Naples. The president of the Italian Antiquarian Bookseller’s Association noted that “this is the biggest books scandal to hit in the past 150 or 200 years.” At the center of this plot to remove these books, Mr. De Caro “a character who seems to have been conjured jointly by Jorge Luis Borges and the Italian crime novelist Andrea Camilleria”, said he took the books in order “to raise money to restore the library.” As an interesting aside, Mr. De Caro, who doesn’t have a college degree, apparently became director of the Girolamini Library through political connections. Read the entire fascinating NYT article here – this is the stuff movies are made of.
Laura