Diabolik: the king of terror

One of the easiest and most entertaining ways to learn a foreign language is surely by reading comics. Today we want to suggest our foreign students learning Italian to read Diabolik.

The title character, i.e. Diabolik, has been created by Angela and Luciana Giussani in 1962. Diabolik is a professional thief, who steals money and jewelry, often from wealthy criminals, with the help of his beautiful fiancée Eva Kant.
They need to steal to sustain their luxurious life and to pay for the state-of-the-art technologies they employ in their robberies.
Particularly exceptional are the masks they use to deceive their identity: they are made of a modifiable resin that looks like real human skin once dried. In this way Diabolik and Eva can perfectly reproduce human facial features. In some comic strips we can see how, thanks to these masks, they can deceive even their own relatives.
Their longtime enemy is Inspector Ginko, chief of the Clerville Police Department in the capital city of the fictitious Clerville State.
The Diabolik adventures are still published monthly, after 50 years from their first edition, with many recurrent reprints. The first issues are particularly precious among comics’ collectors. The comics still fascinate modern readers for their classic plotlines, where good and evil are always at war.

The unexpected benefits: elective affinities

Teaching Italian to students who come from different parts of the world is for us a privilege as well as an enriching experience.
Those who travel abroad to learn a new language and a new culture have an exceptional mental openness and intellectual curiosity.
Thus, every month, faculty, staff and students, feel part of a cosmopolitan family that, in its precious differences, is united by common interests and passions. We have a fabulous time together, during the excursions and at meals, but above all in class. The funniest, most memorable, moments are always during role play activities, when students put themselves in someone else’s shoes and pretend to be a different person... sooner or later some of them we believe, will consider starting an acting career!