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Nina dei lupi

By Alessandro Bertante

(107)

| Paperback | 9788831708579

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Book Description

Il cielo muta di colore, ogni mattina macchie viola e rossastre solcano le nubi delle montagne Occidentali, alimentando timori e affanni nei sopravvissuti. Trascorsi tre anni dalla Sciagura che ha distrutto la civiltà, nel piccolo borgo di Piedimulo, una comunità di contadini vive nascosta, protettContinue

Critics

Nina dei lupi Alessandro Bertante

Passerà alla storia per essere stato “il primo caso di candidatura dal basso” al Premio Strega, dopo un plebiscito di “I like” sulla fanpage nata spontaneamente sul social network più usato e abusato della rete, l’ormai onnipotente Facebook. È Nina d ... (read full critics)

elle published on Wed, 30 Mar 2011

1 Review

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No ho voglia di tradurlo

Nina dei lupi (Nina of the Wolves) is a Novel that captured me from the beginning, filled with magic and suspense. The language is simple and almost harsh: short sentences, a fast rhythm and a fairy tale atmosphere. Characters are introduced from the beginning and nothing is kept secret, details eme ... (continue)

Nina dei lupi (Nina of the Wolves) is a Novel that captured me from the beginning, filled with magic and suspense. The language is simple and almost harsh: short sentences, a fast rhythm and a fairy tale atmosphere. Characters are introduced from the beginning and nothing is kept secret, details emerge line after line without removing any tension, though. As a fairy tale characters are painted but not so close, so we know them as legendary figures, with only the flashbacks to define them in their psychology.
The story might not be so original, is something we hear from decades and scares us with its premonition: something will happen in the future that changes the world as we know it.
In this case, as in “The road “ by Cormac Mc Carthy, we don't know exactly what happened, only a few suggestions. It's the Italian version of the standard, a very plausible scenario of the italic reactions of such a post-apocalyptic event. Both desolating and consolatory: people are hideous, and the only way to survive from violence, hunger and disease is the strength of a small and rural community that will reconnect itself to the ancient roots of humanity.
We are in a not-better defined- small village in the mountains of North Italy, called “Piedimulo” ( Donkeyfoot). We are introduced in a few lines to the post-disaster normal life of the community: fear and hard work. We know it through Alfredo, the wise elder man, and through Nina, his young and even wiser niece: the village is completely isolated from the outside world thanks to a rock slide that blocked the only road to the valley, and behind the village there are only mountains and wolves, their howl every night closer. The 40 villagers are well conscious that this isolation won't last forever, so they live in the constant fear that someone, somehow, crosses their tunnel and predate their food stocks, live-stocking and cultivations, and the memories of what happened tree years earlier still torment them. For this reason Alfredo lead Nina to a friend of him: Alessio, an hermit that lives across the river, among wolves. She must learn the way to get to the solitary man shelter, he's a trusted man that lives a very safe place, hard to reach and secret.
Then we are introduced to other main characters: Luca, Nina's best friend, and his mother Diana, that in her former life was a a cultural anthropologist, and now is a sort of witch.
As predicted the disaster happens: a terrible explosions signs that the outside world has penetrated the isolation of Piedimulo. A group of bandits has blew up the rocks and opened the tunnel, and now they are in town: ruthless or hopeless, they are decided to exploit the unhoped treasure that those peasants have preserved for them. They kill every man without mercy and keep women and children to use them as slaves. Nina manage to run away towards the woods, while Alfredo and Grandmother Marta are slaughtered.
From the moment she reaches Alessio's shelter, her new life begins, and going through ritual passages she'll become a woman really soon. She will learn to live with this man and his wolves, and together they manage to chase away the invaders and build a family together.
Words such as “rules” and “morality” don't have a meaning anymore, men and women are animals again, and they can chose to reconnect themselves to magic and nature or with brutal instincts and violence. So the line between good and evil will be traced.
While Diana, Nina and Alessio fight to kill the rogues he's shot to death and dies in the arms of the one who has become his lover and mate, the young Nina, that will also be the mother of his child.
Season after season, hope raised again, Diana became the leader of the new Piedimulo community, and new people joined them from all over, the village flourished again and grew. And then a new world was born, different from the one before, few people and abound of goods.
Army planes sometimes flew in the sky and noone knows why, and the sky still was purple and fuzzy. In Piedimulo grass and trees covered all the rest of the ancient technology and the world, new babies where born, pilgrims arrived there to see the tomb of the founder Alessio, guided by Diana. Nina never visited the village again, but lived in Alessio shelter with her child and the wolves...and the story lived on generation after generation.

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