Ricetto is a rascal among rascals, struggling to survive in the in human poverty of post-war Rome. The conditions of his life are hunger, theft, betrayal and prostitution. The Ragazzi comes from the same vivid and violent world as Pasolini's great films. But here the humour and endurance of his characters are given a literal tone. He has watched, listened and followed them into their dark alleys. He has witnessed, not invented, their growth and change.

Published as Ragazzi di Vita in 1955, this is Pasolini's first major novel. Like the poems he was writing at the time, it exploits dialect - in this case, the dialect of the Roman new-poor. As in his other major novel, A Violent Life, the translator is faced with a formidable task, that of inventing an equivalent English idiom.