Il campo rosso. Cronaca di una estate. 1946

During the days of the Italian Resistance, in the Cadore mountains, Giovanna Zangrandi had imagined her life after the war with the man she loved, the partisan commander Severino Rizzardi. Her dream was to build a refuge on a mountain pass at 1800 metres above sea level, with a wide view towards the Marmarole, the distant Comelico and the silvery bastions of the Antelao. Everything seemed to vanish with the sudden death of Severino, due to a German ambush, on 26th April 1945. Giovanna decided not to give up on that project and set about building a shelter on Sella Pradònego, with a few labourers and builders, and then ran it herself. A few years later she wrote about that difficult but extraordinary undertaking in a book, Il campo rosso (The Red Camp). The style tells us everything about its author: a direct and determined woman, capable of not giving in to the hardship inflicted by the war, but of dreaming of the future and loving life despite the devastation brought by bombs and guns, inside and outside the soul. The text remains to this day an exceptional testimony of the desire for post-war reconstruction. Preface by Paola Lugo. Afterword by Giuseppe Mendicino.