cover not final

Rome, 1944. In the Nazi-occupied city, we witness the audacity and the story of a group of young partisans who choose to live, love and resist in order to build peace.

An emotional education in struggle and rebellion, the story of the attack in Via Rasella, one of the most emblematic episodes of the Italian Resistance.

In an occupied Rome in 1944, a group of young partisans organise a brave action that will change the course of the war in the capital. Via Rasella, an anonymous street in the city centre, becomes the stage of a fierce clash between dictatorship and resistance.

It’s a risky plan that involves striking a column of German soldiers, the symbol of Nazi power, and sow chaos among the occupying forces. Those few metres, those few seconds, followed by hours of trepidation, waiting, uncertainty and patience, rigour and chance, become part of history. As do the stories of the young people, mostly from the middle classes, often university students, who form the Groups of Patriotic Action, founded a few months earlier against the German occupier.

On that brief – and endless – spring afternoon, there are those who get ready and those who are caught unawares, those who die and those who survive, those who run away and those who return. The attack, brilliantly carried out, unleashes a ruthless revenge that leads to reprisals of devastating proportions: for every German soldier killed, ten Italians will be murdered in Fosse Ardeatine.

With an honest, unprejudiced pen, Ritanna Armeni breaks down taboos and tells the story of an ordinary person, a young woman who believed in Mussolini, a Fascist woman. A great, female fresco of the last decade of the Fascist period.

Born in 1920, Mara is thirteen when this story begins. She lives in Rome. Her father is a shopkeeper, her mother a housewife. Her best friend Nadia, a staunch Fascist, takes her to hear Mussolini in Piazza Venezia unbeknown to her parents. She is a girl like so many others, who enjoys reading and wants to be a writer or a journalist when she grows up. She harbours many dreams and hopes: to study Latin literature and become beautiful and independent like her aunt Luisa, with her small hats and her quick, confident step. The future seems within reach, safe under the eyes of the Duce, displayed between two armchairs in her lounge. This is what Mara thinks of Benito Mussolini, and so do many other Italians who rush to stand beneath the balcony in Piazza Venezia. That is until doubt worms its way in, producing little cracks, opening wounds and altering individual and collective fates.                                Telling the stories of women, their desire for freedom, emancipation, revolution but also love, tenderness, a family, knowledge and wholeness. This is where Ritanna Armeni’s true talent lies.

From their homes, twenty-six of the most prominent writers in the Italian landscape have given a meaning to these days by choosing to tackle this emergency also with the weapons of literature.

R. Armeni, S. Auci, A. Basso, B. Bellomo, G. Biondillo, C. Bonvicini, F. Bosco, M. Buticchi, C. Caboni, D. Carrisi, A. Dalton, G. Festa, A. Frontani, E. Galiano, A. Gazzola, E. Gnone, M. Gramellini, J. Lahiri, F. Noiville, C. Sánchez, G. Sundas, S. Truzzi, I. Tuti, H. Tuzzi, M. Vichi, A. Vitali.

Nowadays, fear has a new name: Covid-19. The only way to defeat it is to stay at home.  Within the four walls that have always shielded us but which have now become impassable boundaries.

They have become almost an enemy.

And yet, day after day, those who always work with words have discovered that rooms, windows, and even the remotest corners of their homes are wings to carry them out into the world. Every one of them has therefore chosen a way to give life to this magic.

From their homes, twenty-six of the most prominent writers in the Italian landscape have given a meaning to these days by choosing to tackle this emergency also with the weapons of literature.

So as to take their daily lives to the readers who love them.

And they decided to do this together with the publishing house Garzanti by donating all the proceeds to the Papa Giovanni XXIII hospital in Bergamo.

Some decided to write about their days, their established routines, about novelties that make you smile. About the tears they cannot stop but also about the force of nature that dissolves the lump in your throat. About forced cohabitation, as well the distancing from people who are dear to you, that feels unbearable. Others write about neighbours who were once strangers but are no longer so, and work that has changed its tools but not its substance. Some admit their error in thinking that it could not all be true or else lend a voice to animals who, on the contrary, are glad this is all true. Others entrust their thoughts about these strange days to beloved characters they have created. Everyone is certain that we will emerge from this more aware of what is truly important, and we will meet, hug, and soon take walks all together. They are certain that solidarity will be the currency we will carry with us and no longer be able to do without.

They are all convinced that words, books and stories bring us together. They create invisible links that break all barriers. When we read we are never alone. And we are strong. And everything appears as it will be. Because all shall be well.

The fascinating adventure of the Night Witches, an all-female soviet regiment at the command of fragile and precarious military planes that stopped the advance of the German army in 1942.

Journalist Ritanna Armeni met one of the last survivors of the Night Witches, an all-female flock of volunteers ranging from the captain to the last mechanic, which succeeded in playing a dominant role in the battle against the Third Reich in Crimea, Belorussia and Poland. 96-year-old Irina Rakobolskaja tells the forgotten story of her and her companions on board the Polikarpov U-2, an obsolete biplane made of wood and fabric with no on-board instruments, who undertook a series of relentless and precise nocturnal bombings that gave them the name of Night Witches, Nachthexen.
These were courageous and audacious women who accepted the tragedy and violence of war and death in order to gain emancipation and equality.