Omero Bastreghi was born in July 1948, the day the revolts of the working class broke out in the countryside of the province of Siena. The dream of a communist revolution that will never take place will be a fundamental imprint for Omero, fueling his tics, his ideas, his aversions, his incessant rumination, marking his university career and also his relationship with women.  Three female figures mark the story: Terrora, mother & factory worker, in the period from 1947; Giglia, the student, 1978; and from 1980 onwards Viola, anchor and mother. Three women, three appointments of the protagonist with life and at the same time, in the background, the concatenation of three eras. Omero’s story is a relay race between generations,  the story of a son of the post-war province, of a working-class world that leaves its indelible traces in family ties; a world destined to hybridize quickly with the small town bourgeoisie and which produces a generation grappling with a different reality. The temporal leaps that weave the narration of Homer’s life reveal with warmth, irony and empathy the climate of the years Italy lived, and then they ferry us into the relevance of a present that we have no difficulty in recognizing.

 

204 pages – Original language: Italian (Exorma, 2019)