“Gargoyle”, when culture enters prison and gives voice back to the invisible

What happens when culture crosses the threshold of a prison? Is it a rescue gesture or an act of cruel clarity, which brings to light voices destined not to be heard? It is from this question that it takes shape Gargoyle, the debut novel by Alfredo Vassalluzzo presented by Sensitive to leaves: a work that delves into the mechanisms of detention and the human soul, choosing a surprising register, at times ironic and even cheerful, to illuminate an environment that many prefer not to remember.

Gargoyle is not just a novel, but a testimony of rupture. Vassalluzzo explores the fragile boundary between the individual’s identity and his reduction to a bureaucratic numberbetween what remains of a person and what the total institution claims to shape. The protagonist Alfredo, an Italian teacher, enters a men’s prison with the baggage of prejudices and fears typical of those who enter that world for the first time. But the rigidity of the protocols soon cracks when faced with the disarming humanity of the inmates.

Among them is Ernesto, a boss with a measured silence and a puzzle enthusiast; Ling, a young Roma without memory, whose anger is the cry of those who cannot see a future; and Damir, a naive and taciturn Russian who entrusts his salvation to a fragile and messy manuscript, around which his hope for redemption revolves. Sandro moves alongside Alfredo, a colleague and companion on a journey that soon becomes more human than professional.

The novel is choral: it intertwines stories, actions, fragility and small gestures that make men often perceived only as numbers emerge from anonymity. And it asks uncomfortable questions, which the reader cannot avoid: what is education in prison really for? Is it possible to teach in a place where time is suspended? And at what price?

The title recalls the stone figures that guard the cathedrals: immobile guardians, witnesses of a reality they cannot change. Thus the author arrives at a bitter truth: the role of the educator is not to win impossible battles, but to be there, to offer a presence, a testimony. Writing Gargoyle then becomes an act of legacy and, in part, of apology towards those who have lost everything and towards lives deviated on tracks impossible to correct with words alone.

The book analyzes the impact of the total institution on the human psyche. The inmates described by Vassalluzzo are essential, vulnerable, often at the mercy of the system: children who fight over a notebook, men who tease each other as the only way to assert an existence. An honest narrative, which does not seek a happy ending, but accepts the complexity of prison experience and shows how, for some, drawing a clear line between inside and outside is almost impossible.