The novel was presented yesterday evening, in the historical setting of the Castello Svevo Angioino of Bisceglie “The years of disobedience” by Giulio Di Luzio. A Bildungsroman that explores the political season of the Eighties, in which the story is set, where the author reconstructs the choice of the protagonist, Roberto, to avoid military service to become a conscientious objector, thus retracing years in which truly different young communist militants chose to engage in difficult neighborhoods of Bisceglie, thus escaping the militaristic and hierarchical ideology of the naia.
Some protagonists of that season were present and confirmed the effervescence of activism and social commitment, which profoundly marked their lives. Of particular interest is the speech by Nicola De Pasquale, who emigrated to the North for work in a period in which the few recommended people could stay at home and the many like him had to pack their bags. A journey, he reiterated, which is part of “the best years of his life as a communist and militant of Lotta Continua”.
“Fefè Laganara and Tonio Musci were also keen to underline the climate of strong political opposition of that period and the harshness of a confrontation between the party system and the student political movement, which was for many a laboratory of political and civil growth”, we read in the press release sent by Di Luzio himself. “The requests that Professor Contò addressed to the author regarding the autobiographical thread, which leads a part of the novel, which he divides into two parts, were provocative. The first covers the time of Roberto’s childhood and his youthful political work. The second sees him already mature and married in the painful elaboration of his vague love as a twenty-year-old, now encysted in his unconscious. From this new condition he observes his youthful years, finding the reasons for a new political protagonism but also the doubts and choices of an unforgettable season ”
