I began by liking Moravia's Time of Desecration. In its interview format (a pointed nod to the legendary Oriana Fallaci), an inquisitor, designated I, extracts from a young woman named Desideria the story of her early introduction to sex, politics, and terrorism….

I admire Moravia's ability to sustain an interesting story in the tiresome format of question and answer. His I is appropriately objective, curious, and skeptical, maintaining the same distance from Desideria as he interposes, by the journalistic format and tonal flatness of the writing, between the novel and the reader. The technique serves both narrative and ideology. In short, I appreciate the author's art.

It is when I come to search for the point of it all that I find myself troubled. Is it possible that Moravia intends to account for Italy's violent and confused politics by setting up the education of Desideria as a terrorist...