Enrico Terrinoni e Mirko Zilahy - Il riflesso dell’ombra: la vera storia di Dracula e Dorian Gray

What happens when literature stops telling stories *about* death and attempts to inhabit it? When characters no longer wish to represent the world, but rather the eternal realm that precedes and follows it? And what happens when two Irish writers—friends during their Dublin years—conceive, almost simultaneously, two impossible creatures: a man who never ages and a dead man who continues to live?

The Reflection of the Shadow: The True Story of Dracula and Dorian Gray is a journey into the luminous shadow of the late nineteenth century, exploring the lives of Dubliners Oscar Wilde and Bram Stoker, the eternal face of Dorian Gray, and the immortal body of Count Dracula. Two authors and two parallel destinies; two works concerning the undead that mark the end of one era and the beginning of another: on one hand, the twilight of the great Victorian novel rooted in realistic action; on the other, the ghostly irruption of modernity—a foray into the psyche, its unconscious fears, unspeakable desires, and inner phantoms.

Mirko Zilahy and Enrico Terrinoni guide the audience into a city where Wilde is released from Reading Gaol just as Dracula arrives in English bookstores—a place where the cry of the Irish banshee (the spirit of death) merges with the call of the vampire. It is a world where literature becomes the inscrutable threshold between beauty and decay, between the desire for eternity and the fear of the end.

Through letters, novels, confessions, poems, and personal accounts, the performance intertwines the lives of the two authors with those of their immortal characters. Dorian Gray and Dracula thus emerge as mirror images: one condemned to remain young while his portrait withers, the other forced to feed on the lives of others to escape death. Both are creatures of the abyss, both symbols of a humanity that dreams of transcending its limits only to lose itself in the process.

The Reflection of the Shadow: The True Story of Dracula and Dorian Gray* is a journey into the invisible, into the ambiguous boundary between life and death, memory and oblivion.

Enrico Terrinoni is a Full Professor at the University for Foreigners of Perugia. He has held positions as a seconded professor at the Accademia dei Lincei, a visiting professor at the University of Notre Dame and National Taiwan Normal University, and a visiting scholar at University College Dublin and Trinity College Dublin. In 2025, he received the Presidential Distinguished Service Award from the President of Ireland. His major publications include *Oltre abita il silenzio. Tradurre la letteratura*; *Chi ha paura dei classici?; Su tutti i vivi e i morti: Joyce a Roma*; *La letteratura come materia oscura*; *La vita dell’altro. Svevo, Joyce: un’amicizia geniale*; and *Leggere libri non serve. Sette brevi lezioni di letteratura*. He has published with leading Italian publishing houses (Mondadori, Einaudi, Adelphi, Feltrinelli, Bompiani). His numerous accolades include the Premio Napoli, Premio Capalbio, Premio Annibal Caro, the Jury Prize at the Premio Viareggio-Répaci, the Jury Prize at the Premio Francesco De Sanctis, the Sergio Perosa National Prize for English Studies, the Von Rezzori Città di Firenze Prize, the Premio Fiuggi Storia, the Premio Città di Cattolica, and the Premio Città di Como for literary non-fiction. He is the author of the novel *A Beautiful Nothing* (2024). He has translated and edited works by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Oscar Wilde, G.B. Shaw, Muriel Spark, Alasdair Gray, George Orwell, and Vladimir Nabokov. He contributes to publications such as Il manifesto, Left, il Venerdì, Robinson, and Il Tascabile. His work has appeared in *La Stampa*, *Il Sole 24 Ore*, *Il Messaggero*, *Corriere della Sera, and Doppiozero.

Mirko Zilahy was born in Rome. He earned a PhD on Giorgio Manganelli from Trinity College Dublin, where he also taught Italian language and literature. He has served as a research associate in English Language and Translation at Roma Tre University and in English Language and Literature at the University for Foreigners of Perugia. He contributes to *La Lettura* (the cultural supplement of *Corriere della Sera*), and his writing has appeared in *Il Manifesto*, *Il Messaggero*, and *The Passenger – Ireland*. He curated a "Psychological Thrillers" series for *Corriere della Sera* that was sold at newsstands. He has worked for Fazi Editore and served as a foreign fiction editor for Minimum Fax, as well as a literary translator from English; his translations include works by authors such as Bram Stoker, John McGahern, John Boyle, and Mat Osman (notably L. Frank Baum’s *The Wizard of Oz* for the BUR Deluxe Classics series, Donna Tartt’s Pulitzer Prize-winning *The Goldfinch* for Rizzoli, and Dennis Lehane’s bestseller *Mystic River* for Longanesi). His 2016 debut novel, *È così che si uccide*, was a major international success with both critics and the public. This was followed by *La forma del buio* (2017) and *Così crudele è la fine* (2018)—which concluded the "Chaos Trilogy" featuring Inspector Mancini—and the geological thriller *L’uomo del bosco* (2021), all published by Longanesi. In 2023, his novel *Nostra signora delle nuvole*, published by HarperCollins, was a contender for the 2024 Strega Prize.

*La stanza delle ombre* (Mondadori, 2025)—the first novel featuring art expert Nemo Sperati, which marked the author's return to the literary thriller—was a finalist for the Scerbanenco Prize and won the Crapanzano Prize. *Il giardino delle ombre* (Mondadori), the second installment in the trilogy centered on crime in the art world, was released in June 2026.