The article outlines the forms and functions of Anna Maria Ortese’s palette in Neapolitan Chronicles. Moving through short stories, essays, and reportages, we can identify topical colors in Ortese’s work: gray, and the achromatic shades black and white. In addition to differentiating the roles of the color series, the article traces Chronicles ’ literary genealogies, linking it to Melville and Poe’s works. Far from being a traditional colorist, Ortese gives life to a pictorial writing, which makes of the deformation of reality a key to a more vivid and acute perception of the world.