Published in 1976, Génie la boja is the best-known novel by Inès Cagnati (1937-2007), a French writer of Italian origin little known among us and who, now, thanks to the good work of the Balearic publishing house Quid Pro Quo and an impeccable translation by Marta Marfany, we have the opportunity to start reading it in Catalan. Among other titles she left behind, this harsh and dark story, like the world it portrays, stands out on its own merits: a rural and impoverished France that we can only imagine in black and white and shrouded in a fog that suffocates everything. The rivers, the wind among the willows, and the daisies growing on the edges of the paths have the same weight and receive the same treatment, exquisite and brutal at the same time, as the most unconfessable family secrets.