Praise for Whitechapel Rhapsody

"Alessandro Manzetti’s “Whitechapel Rhapsody” is a red trance of divine and malefic beauty. His poems, brilliant with imagery and nightmare, are exquisite traumas beguiling the five senses. Depravity was never so lyrical, its dread so ravishing."
--Richard Christian Matheson, author of 'Zoopraxis' and 'Scars'

“Manzetti gives exquisite voice, not just to the devil in a top hat, but also to the streets where sin thrives within greedy and lustful inhabitants. In this master poet’s hands, red becomes a revealing refrain for false healers, ink for letters and framing for the maddening dissections of each victim, named in their own poem, along with the fated address. Cardoselli’s haunting art spotlights the murdered/er’s shadows.”
--Linda D. Addison, multi-award winning author of “How to Recognize a Demon Has Become Your Friend” and HWA Lifetime Achievement Award recipient.

"Surreal, potent, incisive, inventive, intelligent, brutal, and literally bloody good poetry from one of today’s leading dark poets. The Ripper’s world and his mania come alive in these pages. Jack is definitely back!"
--Bruce Boston, Multiple time Bram Stoker Award-winning author of 'Dark Matters' and 'Artifacts'.

"Gritty, sensuous and powerfully visceral, in WHITECHAPEL RHAPSODY, acclaimed author of dark poetry Alessandro Manzetti leads the reader on a nightmare journey through the Ripper’s hunting grounds, the impoverished, crime-ridden slums of London’s East End. In these labyrinthine alleyways — the fetid tenements and reeking brothels where 'Madam Syphilis walks on tiptoe' — there are a hundred wretched ways to die, but none more grisly than bleeding out beneath the Ripper’s blade.
In many of the poems, Manzetti explores the desperate circumstances of the streetwalkers who fell victim to Jack’s implacable razor, those whose 'only friends are alleys, the Thames, and its rats with human thoughts.' In others he adopts the point of view of the madman, who gifts an investigator from the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee with the kidney of a butchered prostitute, daring him to 'bring it close to your ear, like a shell and you can feel the sea of Hell.'
Surely the ‘sea of Hell' in which the Ripper acted out his erotic mania was never rendered with such seductive horror as Manzetti’s richly lyrical and boldly graphic poetry."
--Lucy Taylor, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of 'The Safety of Unknown Cities' and 'Spree and Other Stories'

"Whitechapel Rhapsody is an assault on the five senses, transporting readers back in time to London’s seedy East End. Alessandro Manzetti creates horrific images drenched in blood using masterfully crafted prose and perfect timing. You can feel the dampness of the night, smell the sweat, decay, and death, and hear the footsteps of the legendary Jack the Ripper on the cobblestone streets behind you. This book will have you sleeping with the lights on. A must for every lover of dark poetry."
‒Owl Goingback, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of 'Crota' and 'Coyote Rage'

"Alessandro Manzetti, Italy’s gift to horror, ups his game with his new collection Whitechapel Rhapsody. The streets Manzetti walks are mean, dripping with corruption and death and just behind him following closely is Jack the Ripper of Whitechapel. The poems speak in the voices of victims, bystanders and the Ripper himself who views his work as macabre art. 'Now I have carved you in my mind/like a Rembrandt’s portrait; you will be beautiful for ever, as good as new.' Jack proclaims himself like a god or royalty of death who has preserved for ages: 'I am the Dark King/who wrote stories on the fallopian tubes of the Bastille, on cathedrals of flesh and/subway benches painted with blasphemies.' This volume is not safe, secure or kind. It does not celebrate Jack the Ripper but rather flushes out the corruption of his soul and the pure evil he represents. 5 stars."
--David E. Cowen, Bram Stoker Nominated Author of 'Bleeding Saffron'

“A brutal ripper of a collection from multi-award-winning poet Alessandro Manzetti, a ‘master of bones and knives’, whose poems are ‘pustules of morbid memories’ both as ‘fast as razors and slow as cancer’. Whitechapel Rhapsody will eviscerate you.”
‒ Lee Murray, three-time Bram Stoker Award®-nominee, and author of 'Grotesque: Monster Stories'

Whitechapel Rhapsody by Alessandro Manzetti, Independent Legions 2020, Cover art by Wendy Saber Core, interior illustrations by Stefano Cardoselli. Available, printed and digital, at Amazon
​
Synopsis:  From Two-Time Bram Stoker Award-winning autor Alessandro Manzetti 26 new poems telling in a new way the story of Jack the Ripper, between the alleys and shadows of Whitechapel district in East London during the Victorian Era. Did the Ripper consider himself an artist? Maybe his victims were still life sculptures? Discover the dark vision of the best know serial killer through this modern rhapsody playing the bloody melody of the canonical five victims and the life in Whitechapel slums. Jack is Back!