“On the same side you will find me” by Valentina Mira is not just a novel, but an incisive navigation through the troubled waters of recent Italian history. Nominated for the 2024 Strega prize, this book brings to light the still open scars of a nation that continues to confront the shadows of its past.
The novel opens with the tragic night of January 7, 1978, when two young right-wing activists were killed in Rome, an event that is strongly etched in the collective memory of Italian neo-fascism. The narrative then transports us to the arrest and mysterious death of Mario Scrocca, a far-left militant, creating an intrigue of hidden truths and contradictory versions that challenge the reader to distinguish between reality and fiction.
With narrative skill, Valentina Mira weaves together the destinies of Rossella and Valentina, two women united by the invisible thread of history and their personal experiences of pain and struggle. The novel thus becomes a profound reflection on love and life, on the broken promises of an era that seemed pregnant with possibilities and instead turned out to be full of disillusionment.
Mira faces without fear the “obscene victimism of the executioners”, dismantling the rhetoric and myths of a right that has marked the country. Her novel is a raw and necessary exploration of human feelings and politics, a work that investigates the complexity of our memories and the weight of individual and collective choices.
“On the same side you will find me” is an invitation not to forget, to incessantly seek the truth and to recognize the importance of memory. Valentina Mira demonstrates that she has the ability to look with a critical and sensitive eye at the most painful pages of our history, delivering to the reader a work of great relevance and intense emotion.
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