LE LUNGHE OMBRE FREDDE by Eraldo Baldini (Rizzoli, 2024)
Fausto and Birgit were both prisoners at the Mauthausen concentration camp, and it was there, during the liberation by the Americans, that they met: he, an Italian soldier, she, a German political prisoner. They know very little about each other, yet the urge to leave that hell behind and the strength of a saving love drive them to build a new life together and start a family in Fausto's home town. Theirs is an everyday life made up of small things, a simple existence, far from the mundane, in a house in the middle of what remains of the wild Romagna marshes. But there are shadows in Birgit's heart, silent and persistent, that torment her: no one knows anything about her origins and her life before moving to Italy, and she is always reluctant, even with her husband, to recall memories that are perhaps too painful. And when a new tragedy befalls the family, the muddy water of an obscure past brings to the surface, little by little, a relic of secrets relegated for too long to the chambers of a wounded memory.
Eraldo Baldini - Noir writer, specialising in Cultural Anthropology and Ethnography, in his novels he has managed to combine "rural gothic", noir and horror in an original vein. He began writing essays in this field and turned to fiction in the 1990s. In 1991 he won Cattolica's Mystfest with the short story Re carnevale. He wrote a long series of novels, including two for children: L'estate strana (EL editions, 1997) and Le porte del tempo (Disney Avventura, 2001). Notoriety arrived with the novel Mal'aria (Frassinelli 1998, 2003), also published in France, with which he won the prestigious "Fregene" prize. His books include Come il lupo (Einaudi, 2006) with which he won the 2006 "Predazzo" prize; Melma (Edizioni Ambiente, 2007), Quell'estate di sangue e di luna (Einaudi 2008), L'uomo nero e la bicicletta blu (Einaudi 2011), Gotico rurale (Einaudi 2012), Nevicava sangue (Einaudi 2013), Stirpe selvaggio (Einaudi 2016), La palude dei fuochi erranti (Rizzoli 2019). For Fernandel in 2015 he published the collection of humorous short stories Fra l'Adriatico e il West.
Join us on FRIDAY 18 October at 6 p.m. at Teatro Rasi - Sala Mandaye N'Diaye!
