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I'm Not Scared (novel)I'm Not Scared (Italian: Io non ho paura) is a novel by Niccol� Ammaniti. It is the third novel published by Ammaniti.

In 2003, director Gabriele Salvatores adapted the novel into a film of the same name.

The novel is about a boy in a small Southern Italian town in 1978 who discovers that his father and the rest of the townspeople have kidnapped a boy from a wealthy Northern family. The story portrays the protagonist�s loss of childhood innocence and his transition to acting upon his own conscience, which leads him to go against his own father and the environment in which he grew up.

The novel was originally published in Italian in 2001 and was first published in English in 2003.

Ammaniti�s work received generally positive reviews from literary critics in both Italian and English language publications.

Plot
The novel takes place in 1978 in a fictitious Southern Italian village called Acqua Traverse. Michele, the nine-year-old protagonist, loses a race against the other village children to an abandoned house in the countryside. As the loser he must suffer a punishment chosen by the group, but instead Skull, the group�s leader, insists that their friend Barbara must show her private parts as punishment. Michele intervenes as she unbuttons her pants and says he should face the punishment as the loser of the race. Skull decides that Michele must traverse the dangerous second floor of the house, jump out of the window onto the tree and climb down.

As he climbs down, Michele falls and discovers a covered hole in the ground. When he looks inside he sees a boy lying in the dirt. Disturbed, Michele assumes that the boy is dead, and he bicycles home with his sister. When they arrive home, they find their father, Pino, who has returned home from his work as a truck driver. Pino tells Michele he must defeat him at arm-wrestling to have dinner, and while they wrestle Pino calls him a sissy and says he has ricotta for muscles. They eventually have dinner, however, and Pino unveils the present he had brought for the children, a model gondola from Venice.

During the following week, Michele visits the hole two times. The first time, he realizes that the boy is alive, and he discovers a bowl with the same design as one his mother owns in the abandoned house. The second time, he sees Felice, Skull�s brother, leaving the house in his car. This time Michele is able to talk to the boy, who is delirious and startles Michele by shouting �I�m dead! I�m dead!

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