This actually looks like good old fashioned artisanal plagiarism, not least because the August 2025 Guardian review wouldn't have been in LLM training corpuses in time for the Jan 2026 NYT review.
It's interesting that the NYT writer thinks he can partially deflect blame by implicating AI, though!
![Guardian review
But the novel is also rich in smaller characters, from the lazy Machiavellian Stefano to hardworking Vittorio, whose otherworldly twin brother Emmanuele is prone to speaking in tongues and dressing up in ragtag begged-and-borrowed uniforms[…].
Because this is most significantly a song of love to a country of contradictions, battered, war-torn, divided, misguided and miraculous: an Italy where life is costume and the performance of art, and where circuses spring up on wasteland.
The Italy that produced both Mussolini and Fellini, fascists and futurists and communists; where “beauty is always imperilled” and “genius grows like a weed”.
NYT review
The novel is also rich in secondary characters, from the lazy, Machiavellian Stefano to Mimo’s childhood friend and fellow craftsman Vittorio and Vittorio’s otherworldly twin, Emanuele, who speaks in tongues and dresses in scavenged uniforms.
Together they populate what is ultimately a love song to a country of contradictions: battered, divided, misguided and miraculous. This is an Italy where life is performance, where circuses rise on wasteland, where beauty is perpetually imperiled and genius proliferates unchecked.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:gqqpmbwjeyvvgvde5dlosq3n/bafkreib45urpfz3wffydeaa4t5thfemsrvtnt6t76v6wjqkkxxit342tny)
