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.

Claudia Durastanti was born in Brooklyn, emigrated to a small town in southern Italy at the age of six, then lived in London and returned to the United States. She now lives in Rome. With L'estrangera, she was a finalist for the Strega Prize and the Prix Fémina, won the Strega Off Prize and the PEN Award, and was featured among the best books of the year by The New Yorker magazine. Missitàlia (L'Altra Editorial / Anagrama; translated by Mercè Ubach) is a historical journey that goes from the south of Risorgimento Italy to an imagined future on the Moon. There is nothing conventional in this book, where the protagonists are women who live on the fringes, and which combines genres such as western, espionage, dystopia, or intrigue.