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Spring 1940: Franco leaves the monastery where he was a novice to become a farmer to his parents’ farm at Campanella, an unidentifi ed village in the North of Italy. War is approaching, and Franco is the narrator of a choral story centered in the rural microcosmos of Campanella: farmers, workers, a mysterious teacher, a warrant officer, a fascist secretary and a prelate. On the 8th of September 1943 the Nazis occupation causes radical, life-changing choices, and begins the tale of the partisan movement, permeated by a strong “poetics of the land”. The partisans are helped by the monks; Don Benedetto follows them on the mountains unarmed, animated by ferocious doubts and an urgent sentiment of fraternity. Franco and his fellow villagers take their part in the Great History, that reveals itself in the small stories. The narration goes on through the seasons of the land and of life, following the protagonists until the sense of such great events will finally become clear.

N.A.

Luisito Bianchi (1927-2012) has been a priest since 1950. He worked as a teacher, translator but also as gas station clerk and as a hospital attendant. Now he is chaplain at a monastery near Milan. For Sironi he published Come un atomo sulla bilancia (2005) and I miei amici (2008).