I Ventitré Giorni della Città di Alba – Beppe Fenoglio

Now that I think about it, this was the first book by Fenoglio that I read, at a time in which I hadn’t really started reading yet, and when all the partisans in these short stories had the face of either Stefano Dionisi (who portrayed Johnny in the dramatically underrated movie taken from Il Partigiano Johnny) or of my grandfather (whom I’ve never met, and so was always pictured in my mind as the dashing 20-something year old that I saw in my grandma’s photo albums).

Every place has its proud moments, that get passed down and glorified from generation to generation, and in my region there are very few of those that can compare with the twenty-three days of existence of the Partisan Republic of Alba (one of the first cities in Northern Italy to be – momentarily – freed from Fascist rule).

Fenoglio was a supremely talented writer, able to strip the partisans of their myth and paint them for what they really were: ill-equipped scared little kids with their hearts in the right place. Needless to say, the six stories about the Resistance War in this collection have had much more of an impact on me than those on agricultural life in the period (still extremely interesting, just way less inspiring).

La Malora – Beppe Fenoglio

A rare work of art by Fenoglio that is not about Italian Fascism. It’s still about “my” hills though, so I’m obviously still biased. My heart clearly considers this (like pretty much anything else by Fenoglio) to be one of the best books of the Italian 20^th century. However, I do fully realize that most readers will (fairly rightfully) agree to disagree with me.

Because at the end of the day this book is about something so local, from the landscape of the area to the actual challenges faced by Agostino and his family, that it is probably really hard to understand for outsiders. I’ve grown up walking, hiking, and cycling on those hills, looking at the farms and fields that Fenoglio talks about. For anyone that hasn’t done this, the book is bound to be extremely dry, probably too grim, and the small accomplishments and huge hurdles in Agostino’s way are probably going to be almost incomprehensible.

Yet, for someone who has grown up on those hills and whose granddad was a “countryside serf”, as they called themselves, much like the novel’s protagonist, this is a work of incomparable beauty. And it seems hard to believe that those harsh hills are now on everybody’s mouths because of their wines.