A Book Saves Lives
The Reader Thief
A 38-year-old climbs onto the balcony of a flat in Rome. He enters the apartment presumably to rob it, but gets distracted by a book he spots on a table. The book tells Homer’s Iliad from the perspective of the gods. Instead of stealing jewellery and electronics and cash, the man sits down and reads.
The 71-year-old homeowner wakes and enters the room to find the man totally engrossed in the book, reports the BBC. The alleged thief escapes via the balcony, only to be arrested soon after. Police say he was carrying a bag of expensive clothes, which may have come from another flat.
The accused claims he was trying to visit a friend in the building but entered the wrong flat. He thought it was a B&B, saw the book and started reading.
It makes you wonder.
What if the book had been a cheap romance or a CEO biography or cringy fiction written by a celebrity? Would the alleged thief, instead of reading, have robbed the place blind, leaving the older man distraught, and possibly broke?
Or maybe an ugly confrontation would have resulted with the older man, agitated over seeing his watch and iPhone swiped, taking a swing at the intruder, only to be beaten up, possibly killed.
