Order the future to remember the past

Dividing a book into three blocks of different styles and tones is a risky decision: in principle, it should have the advantage of not boring readers with a single story, but it often carries the danger of losing them, because it is difficult for the three parts to please in the same way. In the case of Missitàlia, this novel with a mysterious and polysemous title, the thing remains half-way. The harshness and hardness of the first part are a difficult door to pass for the prize that a much more interesting second and third part represent, but this is the bet of Claudia Durastanti, an author who triumphed worldwide with the previous title, The foreigner, of an autobiographical nature.

The three blocks of Miss Italy take place in three distinct historical periods: the mid-19th century, just after Italian unification, the 1950s, and the 2050s. The three stories are set in the same geographical location, the region of Lucania in southern Italy, and are starred by three women, Amalia Spada, Ada, and A. The first is the founder of a matriarchal community, a refuge for wild, disinherited, and rebellious people seeking a new life. The second is an anthropologist participating in an expedition to Lucania to study local witchcraft, but also oil exploitation. A. is the protagonist of a story set in a future where oil exploitation has been replaced by the conquest of the Moon. We are in a Lucanian space base from which rockets take off and land, traveling back and forth to the satellite that presides over the entire novel, like a telluric force that unites the three women, who seek independence and, above all, a way to build themselves without depending on the gaze of others: Amalia is already far beyond, Ada learns hard life lessons, and A. must face one of the most difficult.

Accept that we are living the end of the world

Durastanti's writing is serious, dense, and delves deep into many contemporary concerns: environmentalism, political struggles, family or tribal organization, the exploitation of territory, the toxicity of people and the planet. The readings and influences are abundant: if the first part recalls the temporal displacement and magic of the films of Alice Rohrwacher, the second seems like a novel by Cesare Pavese, with a protagonist torn between compromesso and the search for love: “Even though I hadn't started a family, I had felt I was part of a community [...] and that it's not true that chosen bonds are always freer”. The third aligns with the anticipation novels that are once again populating the novelty shelves: we have accepted that it is possible we are living the end of the world and this raises questions: how will it go, this end? How will we live it? Claudia Durastanti constructs a thoughtful response that balances the search for individual freedom with integration into the group, longing for the past with eagerness for the future, and the triumph of love over hate.