Il Coraggio del Pettirosso - Maurizio Maggiani

  

A book that I had tried to read as a teenager but that I had originally failed to get into. I had another go this summer, and I really enjoyed about half of it, the other half was too allegorical for me. 

The half that I loved was the main character's story in the present time, in a melting pot of anarcho-misfits, with an illegal journey to retrace his Italian roots and a meeting with the poet Giuseppe Ungaretti, the (literal) deep dives in the port of Alexandria, and the erratic research into his past and his identity agains the backdrop of the Six-Day War. 

The half that I didn't like was the dreamlike section drawing parallels with medieval love and persecution, community and ideals. I'm just not built for stuff like that I'm afraid...

In Ogni Caso Nessun Rimorso – Pino Cacucci

Cacucci is one of those really good (not great, but really good) Italian writers whose existence somehow is often forgotten by the country’s shrinking readership. He has written fiction (Puerto Escondido is a funny little gem) as well as fictionalized history books, like this one about Jules Bonnot and the Bonnot Gang at the turn of the century.

The novel alternates fictionalized descriptions of Bonnot’s life to frequent extracts from anarchist writing (it is also the novel which introduced me to Max Stirner: until I was 16 I was convinced that Bakunin had been the only actual anarchist philosopher). It is a beautiful attempt to again give importance to the small defeated of history (the big ones are still remembered, the small ones are quickly forgotten). More people should read this book (even if it’s just to realize who were the members of the first criminal gang to use a car), but even in this case more people won’t.