Ricetto was walking behind them, his eyes narrowed into a squint. When they reached the place where Tiburtino III begins, he said, 'So long, I'm taking off.' 'Where you going?' asked Caciotta, stopping. Amerigo stopped too...But at that moment two familiar forms loomed up against the yellowish light of the first buildings in Tiburtino, coming down toward the fountain where the boys stopped. 'The cops,' said Caciotta...

The Ragazzi comes from the same vivid and violent world as Pasolini's great films. In the poverty and chaos of postwar Rome, Ricetto and his gang survive by their wits, their cruelty and their instincts for survival. Their lives are shaped by hunger, theft, betrayal and prostitution; they celebrate their triumphs with brutal abandon and die bleak deaths. Pasolini writes of this harsh world with an understanding that there is humanity and even humour here.

The Ragazzi caused a scandal on its first publication in 1955. Pasolini's unsentimental depiction of young masculinity adrift in a hard and amoral society still resonates powerfully today.