Giulio Angioni is one of the most interesting voices in the “nouvelle vague” of the Sardinian fiction. His literary production is copious: L'oro di Fraus (Editori Riuniti 1988; Il Maestrale 1998), Il sale sulla ferita (Marsilio 1990), Una ignota compagnia (Feltrinelli 1992; Il Maestrale 2007), Il gioco del mondo (Il Maestrale 2000); Among his recent titles: Millant’anni (Il Maestrale 2002), La casa della palma (Avagliano 2003), Assandira (Sellerio 2004), Alba dei giorni bui (Il Maestrale 2005; Dessí Literary Award), Le fiamme di Toledo (Sellerio 2006; Alvaro Literary Award and Mondello Literary Award)

 

La pelle intera

Italy, Piemonte, winter 1944-45, during World War II: Efis Brau is a seventeen-year-old Sardinian boy. After having crossed the sea we find him enlisted in a odd army, called “The Legion” where Italian and German  soldiers fight partisans together. Five years before Efis left Sardinia to study in a seminary. Because of the war he is forced to move to a castle in the countryside and there he met Captain Berger who was the commander in chief of “The Legion”; and thus he decided to start fighting for the same army. Efis’ mind gets more and more confused. Far away from his island he has to deal with resistance fighters, the German occupation and the Anglo-American advance. One night, while he is on sentry-go in Calamandrana’s school, turned by Germans into barracks, some fellows arrive with a prisoner, a man called Ricu Gross, someone who Efis had known before when he was a student . Who is this man? And why does Captain Berger treat him in a friendly way, while the soldiers beat him? Is he an enemy or a friend? After being taken prisoner by the resistance fighters, he runs away and hides in an old church with an eccentric, antifascist priest, an American and an English soldier. During this never-ending war winter, he figures out who friends and enemies are, and how to save his own skin.