The Intruder

In Short

Set in the elegant, stifling atmosphere of a provincial Italian estate, this novel follows Tullio Hermil, a man who has betrayed his wife, Juliana, repeatedly. When Juliana becomes pregnant by another man, Tullio is forced to confront the existence of an "intruder"—the child who threatens his family’s peace and his own pride. Written with sharp, analytical intensity, the book endures as a chilling portrait of a man driven by intellectual vanity and moral decay, documenting his descent into a cold, calculated obsession that transcends simple jealousy to become a singular, harrowing crime.

The Story

Tullio Hermil, a refined and affluent man, lives in an unhappy state of marital dissolution. Having spent years indulging in serial infidelities, including affairs with his wife’s closest friends, he finds his home life marked by a cold, persistent tension. Juliana, his wife, has endured his humiliations with a quiet, prideful melancholy. During a stay at the family country estate, the Badiola, the couple attempts a fragile reconciliation. However, their tentative peace is shattered when Tullio discovers that Juliana is pregnant. He soon realizes, through a series of agonizing, silent deductions, that the child is not his, but the product of an affair Juliana had during one of his own long absences.

The revelation transforms Tullio’s world. He becomes obsessed with the "intruder," the unborn child who occupies his home and threatens the legitimacy of his family name. While he maintains a facade of normalcy for the sake of his mother and his own children, Maria and Natalia, his mind is consumed by visions of the child’s future: a boy who will usurp his place, steal his mother’s affection, and act as a living, breathing monument to his own failure.

As the pregnancy progresses, Tullio’s internal life becomes a theater of horrors. He watches Juliana wither under the strain of her secret and her own profound guilt. Despite his intellectual disgust, he finds himself trapped in a cycle of suffering, caught between his hatred for the child and his proximity to his wife’s misery. He begins to cultivate a "homicidal will," convincing himself that the child’s existence is an affront to the natural order of his house. He even seeks out the biological father—a writer—and learns that the man is dying of a degenerative disease, a fact that feeds Tullio’s dark, superstitious belief that the child is marked for destruction.

When the child is finally born, Tullio’s repulsion does not abate; it intensifies. He watches the infant with a clinical, predatory gaze, waiting for the "effects" of his own silent condemnation to manifest. He observes the baby’s health, the nursing, and the quiet routines of the nursery, all while mentally calculating how to remove the obstacle to his peace. The drama reaches a bleak conclusion when the infant falls ill during the winter. Tullio, observing the child’s decline with a mixture of relief and dissociation, ultimately presides over the burial in the family vault. The child’s death, rather than providing a clean slate, leaves Tullio with a hollow, permanent sense of disconnection from the life he once knew.

How It Unfolds

The confession of a secret The narrative opens with the protagonist’s internal monologue, revealing his self-appointed role as an assassin who cannot be reached by human law. He grapples with the weight of a secret he has kept for a year: the premeditated murder of an infant in his own house.

The fragile facade Tullio and Juliana attempt to restart their marriage at the Badiola, surrounded by the scent of violets and the normalcy of family life. This veneer of domestic tranquility is immediately threatened by Tullio’s lingering infidelity and the growing, unspoken knowledge of Juliana’s betrayal.

The revelation of the intruder Tullio learns of the pregnancy, a discovery that shifts his world into an abyss. He begins to view the unborn child as a malevolent agent, a "perverse phantom" that will inevitably destroy the hierarchy of his household.

The mental siege As the child arrives, Tullio’s obsession turns to the nursery. He studies the infant like a scientist observing a specimen, waiting for the signs of the disease or misfortune he desires to befall it.

The final act The narrative concludes in the quiet, stone-cold atmosphere of the family tomb. The child is buried, and Tullio is left to process the silence that follows his cold-blooded victory.

The People

Tullio Hermil is the book's complex, often repulsive center. Driven by a volatile mix of intellectual vanity and emotional cruelty, he justifies his actions through a sense of moral superiority. By the end, he is a man hollowed out by his own malice, unable to feel anything but a profound, chilling detachment.

Juliana is the silent, suffering heart of the story. She carries the burden of her infidelity and the physical toll of her pregnancy, yet she remains a figure of tragic dignity. She seeks peace, but finds herself coerced into a complicity of silence by a husband who weaponizes her own guilt against her.

The Intruder (the infant) is never characterized as a person, but as a symbolic threat. To Tullio, the child is a "malefic being" and an adversary, a representation of the rupture in his domestic life that he feels entitled to mend through violence.

The Mother represents the traditional, unsuspecting innocence of the household. Her presence highlights the contrast between the sunny, orderly world of the Badiola and the dark, pathological reality unfolding within its walls.

In Its Own Voice

Reflecting on the secret he harbors, the protagonist contemplates the impossibility of seeking traditional justice for his own actions.

"It is I, Tullio Hermil, who am his assassin. I premeditated that assassination in my house. I committed it with perfect lucidity of conscience, methodically, in all security."

Tullio describes the suffocating, performative nature of his existence as he attempts to maintain his marriage while harboring a death sentence for the child.

"And that great peace, that great goodness, enveloped the ignoble secret which Juliana and I were condemned to keep without dying of it!"

What It's Really About

This novel is a study of the dark side of the aesthetic and intellectual ego. It examines how a man’s obsession with his own perceived "nobility" and "superiority" can justify the most horrific acts of violence. The book poses difficult questions about the nature of morality in a life governed by aesthetic pleasure and vanity: Is the destruction of an "intruder" a moral necessity or merely the final act of a corrupted mind? It explores the tension between the public face of a traditional family and the hidden, violent impulses that simmer beneath the surface, suggesting that for the narcissistic protagonist, the only way to "restore" his world is to systematically eradicate anything that exposes his own failure.

Why Read It Today

Readers who appreciate psychological fiction that prioritizes the internal, fevered logic of a narrator over traditional plot progression will find this book deeply compelling. It is a work of extreme precision, where every scent—the smell of hawthorns, the odor of violets—is used to heighten the suffocating, dreamlike quality of the Badiola. It feels less like a conventional novel and more like a long, dark descent into a fever.

However, the experience of reading this work is intentionally difficult. The protagonist is an unapologetic villain, and his long, cold justifications for infanticide make for an arduous emotional journey. The prose is lush and highly atmospheric, characteristic of its period, which may feel dense to a modern reader expecting lean, minimalist storytelling. There is no moralizing here; the author does not provide a comfortable distance between the reader and the narrator’s madness. You are forced to inhabit Tullio’s mind, witnessing the slow, methodical erosion of his humanity as he destroys the very life he is sworn to protect. It is a haunting, masterful look at the capacity for evil within a refined, "civilized" exterior, and the chill of its final scenes remains with you long after the book is closed.