Prima di noi

A family in northern Italy, between the beginning of one century and the advent of another, a continuous metamorphosis between exodus and drift, from the mountains to the plains, from the village to the suburbs, from the fields to the factories. Time passing by, the past weaving its destiny, the fog rising from the future; in between, a present that seems to last forever and that is the only visible horizon, theatre of possibilities and cage of desires.This is the landscape in which Giorgio Fontana’s characters, the Sartoris, live and die, ever since the first of them flees the army after the retreat from Caporetto and meets a girl in a country house. Then a son lost in North Africa, two surviving men and their new families, to arrive at the present day: those of a young woman who visits her great-grandfather’s grave, almost closing a circle. Four generations, from 1917 to 2012, moving from rural Friuli to contemporary Milan, facing two world wars and reconstruction, the quest for personal success or the dream of revolution, a professorship in a school and a desk in a multinational company. It is about a century, which never becomes short: for the Sartori it contains everything, guilt, shame, anger, frenzy, the journey. Always the clash and almost never the calm, or the ultimate feeling of happiness. But the Sartoris do not need it, and perhaps they do not even believe in happiness. Because if in every place in the world one must fight and struggle, then it is better to learn to accept one’s anxieties, and stay where life sends us.A historical and choral novel, a vast narrative portrait of the Italian twentieth century, the Sartoris’ tale tackles the burden of a past that seems to have bequeathed only fatigue and complexity, even in the clearest gestures of love. If the mistakes and misfortunes of the fathers fall on the children, how can we get rid of them? Is there an original force capable of condemning an entire family to restlessness? How to redeem oneself and one’s lineage? The answer to these questions is in the voice of a new time, in the gaze of those who are about to live it, in the words of a writer who is not even forty years old and who wanted to confront poverty and redemption, faith and politics, the courage of the weak and the violence of the strong, with the weapons of literature.