Il Prete Giusto – Nuto Revelli

Another wonderfully moving book by Nuto Revelli. And yet another one about Italian Fascism (in my defence, I hadn’t written about one of those in a while).

Similarly to Il Mondo dei Vinti, this is oral history at its finest. However, Raimondo Vitale, isn’t like the poor peasants of the other masterpiece by Revelli, he is a man capable of shaping his own destiny (at least to an extent) and to help others. The word “giusto” in the title does not signify that Viale was a just man, but that he was – rightfully – named “Righteous among the nations” because of the help he gave to persecuted Jewish families during the Second World War.

This is a book that students in their final year of high-school should be forced to read (in Italy and France, at least), but again I’m afraid we’re not going to run the risk of that happening anytime soon. So bring on pointless feuillettons from the early 19^th century (yes, to this day I am still very fond of Manzoni’s I Promessi Sposi)

Il Mondo dei Vinti – Nuto Revelli

And yet another Italian book about... Fascism! Well, not quite, or at least, not just that. Anyway, one of the books that I read for (or instead of doing?) my Ph.D.

This is a display of oral history at its finest, probably the only non-fiction book that I will write about in this blog. I wish Italian high-schools could force students to read this, but it’s unlikely to happen in a country where the school system somehow still works yet students read Cosmo at best.

Il Mondo dei Vinti is a collection of short stories/interviews to the everyday poor people of Northern Italy. The reader dives head first into the memories of these people, and one is bound to wonder whether it made any difference to them whether a tiny king, a petty dictator or a hopeful Prime Minister were taking the big decisions in Rome.