Canale Mussolini by Antonio Pennacchi Review

And now guess who was the next morning at the station of Littoria – You have to believe me already, otherwise we let it even better, I invent nothing – Please Like what you say What the? was the empire well, really I have not understood? – What do you want to come but the next time you and lay the Pontine marshes.

In this tone – jovial, irreverent, refreshingly, dry – the narrator talks of a stunning novel of the reader and leads him on tight reins.

He is a gifted orator, the doubts and objections allowing his listener or anticipated, but only to give in order to nip in the bud immediately and his own version of emphasis. Modern political correctness it is strange – he does not mince his words. He is aware that he can not explain everything, despite his phenomenal memory and political Through gaze, but he has to all a honest opinion. Listening to him read is simply a pleasure.

Who is this gentleman, it gives us the author page to last puzzle.

What he presents to us, is about three generations reaching epic of his family; it is closely linked to the early years of Italian fascism and with a gigantic prestige companies in the “Duce” Benito Mussolini: the draining of the Pontine Marshes, an area of ​​nearly 800 square kilometers on the Tyrrhenian Sea to the southeast, malaria infested with Rome since ancient times and . virtually uninhabitable

had been many nut to crack in the project, but all – even Julius Caesar and Napoleon – failed.

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Mussolini began in 1928 to launch a job-creation program to dig a drainage system with a central channel ( “Canale Mussolini”) in the Agro Pontino to gain new agricultural land and to colonize and create new cities. For this he drew particular poor families from Emilia-Romagna, Friuli and the Veneto (northern Italy).

There, thousands of small farmers had been exploited long been of the big landowners and driven into debt. save as Mussolini in 1927, the Italian foreign balances from collapse, the exchange rate Lira / firmly put dollars arbitrary, the debts of “sharecroppers” were priceless, and they were forced to return their land to the owners. Now the “Duce” presented as the savior of the dispossessed and impoverished, at whose plight he had participated. A committee spoke to each family a yard and six dairy cows. Only farmers and families with more than 10 children and a male creature who had fought in the first world war for Italy were allowed to apply.

Within three years taken 30,000 people the opportunity of a lifetime to escape the hunger and left their home. Many of them were not farmers, but hairdressers, cobblers or day laborers who had even forged papers to get out. You had only a basic knowledge of agriculture and animal husbandry are taught the start of the propaganda gutted agricultural project therefore was somewhat difficult. but the bottom line is that the action was successful, as can still be viewed today.

One of the families involved are the Peruzzi, which derive their homestead Podere 517 at the Parallela Sinistra, the street right on the Grand Mussolini , They, too, had been in the old country exploited ( “cursed be the [Count] Zorzi Vila”) and had sympathized with socialist ideas. But only the “Duce” is able to change their lives. For which he is solidarity safe.

To be quite close to it to be able to the social, political and military developments of the season is the author of “his” extended family Peruzzi close to the central personnel: uncle Pericle sitting with the young radical socialists Mussolini in prison; they become friends, and then on the aspiring politician is like a guest in the home Peruzzi. He even keeps an eye on the wife of clan chiefs and does her like some favor; Son of a blacksmith – as he repaired their Egge. Of course, he pulls so the anger of spouse to himself and the young woman: “You dirty whore,” insulted the then in the evening.

From the near vision with we experience how the little people to non- ideological followers of. fascism are. Fighting grandfather Perruzzi – a socialist of the first hour – before the first world war or against the landowner, his sons follow soon the Duce. That they hold a totalitarian system the stirrups, they do not recognize. Drag the black shirts on, volunteer for the war, fighting in Abyssinia in 1935, and later defend their country against the Allies: “A Peruzzi never gives up.” After their victory, they quickly change clothes and be Democrats. Even in retrospect they judge pragmatic ( “Freedom has never existed in Italy that fascism should abolish da?”) And to have been apolitical ( “The fact that Mussolini abstinent is so nonsense … The Peruzzi he drank, and .. like “) the everyday life of fascism is told here in a fascinating, often amusing way, neither glorifies nor trivialized

the many members of the Peruzzi family -. especially their wives – delight as the true heroes of the novel. They are “all a bit crazy”, their dialogues are direct, dramatic, coarse, full of obscenities and innuendo. When grandmother dreaming at night of a black coat, a serious risk suggest. Daughter Armida talks to her bees, she took against the fierce resistance of all relatives from the Veneto region in the Pontine Marshes, and they remain her as a faithful companion, when the family it violates the end of the novel.

Antonio Pennacchi which in Latina (one of Mussolini in the Agro Pontino based città nuove ) was born in 1950, has created with its magnificent Roman a multifaceted epic, which can make it big the little people while spreading an extensive, sophisticated, detailed and meticulously researched picture of Italian history. Rightly it was awarded the prestigious Italian literary prize Premio Strega of 2010. Now at Hanser, the German version was published, gorgeous congenially translated by Barbara Little, in 2011 received the German-Italian translation prize.