The murder of Pasolini in 1975 ended his work on his major work, the novel Petrolio, which he had begun years earlier. When Pasolini's niece decided to publish the novel in a carefully annotated form 17 years later, it caused a huge scandal. Pasolini's images of power come from a center of power, the oil company ENI. They are bitter and satirical images, full of sorrow over the destruction of a familiar world, full of anger at the rising hedonistic consumerism. This fury, along with the extravagant scenes of sexual orgies, has lost none of its urgency, provocative power, and modernity even after 40 years. The reader involuntarily pauses and blushes in the face of transgressions of all kinds.