Synopsis

The primo romanzo series Unici is a book about women unlike any other. Its revolutionary gesture is this: rather than addressing the present, it clings to its roots, to the twentieth century, and lets the documents speak for themselves without comment. It juxtaposes real voices and lets them do their work. The protagonist of Nonostante Tutte is called Nina, but she could be called by over a hundred different names. Her story is fictional, her narrative is not: it is entrusted to the words of those who have left a trace of themselves on a page that has escaped oblivion. It is through these fragments of voices, selected by the author from thousands and then assembled like pieces of a mosaic, that the protagonist of this novel comes to life. As if those one hundred and nineteen women were passing the baton and the word in an endless relay to tell a single story with a distinct sparkle. An enchanted and fractured childhood, the desire for a different life, sex, work, marriage, motherhood, illness, friendship, civic commitment, old age… Individual experiences, irreducible, certainly, yet collective. This is why Filippo Maria Battaglia's novel, with its highly original structure, can also be considered a political novel. The emotion arises from there: from seeing, from feeling, what is similar and what remains connected to a life, to that life. From juxtaposing stories with History, without ever abandoning the shadows. Because words can also be scars, and "that's what," says Nina, "mine must serve: to remember."